Joseph Vieira

The able to learn is a critical skills that enable us to enjoy life and to become a better person everyday is to be lifelong learner.  Lifelong learner is a person who strives for knowledge.  The lifelong learner will seek different way to learn because they are thirst.  It may be a book that quenches their thirst.  Maybe they enjoy the intellectual environment at the local college lecture series. 

Each lifelong learner has their reason of continuing learn.  It may be to enhance their professional and personal life.  It may be to gain their self-esteem.  There are several reasons. 

Lifelong learner holds the same goal, to be a better person through learning.  When you learn something new, you are cultivating yourself to a better person by gain a new skills, knowledge, and better understanding of how our world runs. 

Please do Google “lifelong learner” and there will be many and many tips of what path can we take to become a wonderful lifelong learner.  I just want to share an extraordinary way to learn.

The unique way to learn is to become a teacher.  When you become a teacher, you become a student of your students.  Yes, this seems funny but being in a direct contact with your students who come from different walks of life brings something special to share.  It is always something new.  You must be a different kind of teacher to experience this.  It is a teacher who listens and share with the students. 

Sad, many of teachers enter this picture as a superior.  I am right and you are wrong.  I know everything.  With this mindset, it hinders the able to listens and learns.  When come with this approaching, the students will find you intimidating and the students end up holding all their cards because they are scared.   With a tender heart but a firm mind, the students will respect you.  With the mutual respect, the students open and you will learn about who they are and get to see what is in their soul.  You will start to see what the students want and needs.  This is the moment where you become the best teacher because you are out on a mission to fulfill their needs and to guide them to a great life.    

It is not necessary to be a teacher in a formal education setting.  It can be providing a workshop, one-on-one session, or give a presentation.  You may do this out of your request.  Or you get asked to do this gig.  It is an honor because you are recognized as an authority figure or someone who is an expert. 

As a responsible teacher, I want to make sure that my students get the best education.  I will go over the materials and also to study the segmentation of my students.  Ironically, I learn more because I research like a madman although I am expert in this subject.  I get in touch with the students.  I look at the demographic to identify the needs and to prepare accurately.  I learn about their lifestyle, the culture, and the background.  I thought I know but I was wrong.  I learn more than ever.

Through the session, I get the opportunity to meet the wonderful people.  Each conversation we held, there is always something new.  It may be the knowledge they add to the topic.  It may be a story of their life which embodies the spirit of their life that they open and share.  It can be personal stories, their culture, or even new discover.  It is surreal that you deepening you knowledge because you and the students are exchanging on personal level.  You get the first-hand experience that the textbooks can’t provide.

For example, you spent 3 years studying Spanish.  You are off to a vacation to Spanish.  You realized that the 3 years of studying Spanish does not help you to engage in a fully conversation with the Spaniards.  Suddenly, you spot a hot Spanish hunk and you spent the week with that babe.  You learn so much Spanish, their culture, food, and their way of life in just 1 week than you learn in your 3 years of Spanish class.  This is the power of teacher-student relationship practice the giving and receiving relationship.   

I have done these opportunities as paying and volunteer jobs.  In my opinion, volunteer to teach is a humble experience.  You give up the time of able to earn money to prepare world class teaching material for your students.  You go out and deliver your best pitch.  With this volunteer mentality, it become all about giving with no incentive.  The projection is different because it comes out of your heart.  In this midst, you are committed to see the students benefit something in the end.  In the end, the feeling is exhilarating because it is pure action out of heart with no expectation in return.  The interaction with students is amazing. 

This does not make the paying job experience any less.  Doing this as a paying job is great learning experience.  The mentality is different because it is a job.  You will experience a great moment if doing this as a paying job.  The difference is the duration of job as a teacher.  You are pay for your time and expertise.  The money is your fuel to continue doing the great job.  If you enjoy this job and then it is a best job in the world because you experience a great moment and you learn something new everyday.  You even get pay for doing this.  Sacrifice and deserving do have a different feeling but they both end with a big bang.  When you volunteer, you sacrificed.  When you get pay, you deserve. 

The experience of paying and volunteer has the same awesome incentive you will get in the return.  The awesome incentive is you forged a lifetime friendship with students and you get to witness their moment when the “light bulb” goes off.   You also will reap the benefit of hearing their success stories of your students take your teachings to their heart when you and the student meet again.

Aside the paying and volunteer teaching jobs.  We will always be a teacher-student.  When we learn something from someone else, we become a student.  When we share our knowledge, we become a teacher.  It is a giving and receiving society we live in.  We must give first in order to receive.  Always be ready to listen, to open your mind and heart, and to participate in a discourse.  It is an opportunity to learn and to become a better person.  When we rejects, we wasted a precious knowledge that can make world a better place.  It is because we cease the giving and receiving conduit.  Don’t be the person that clogged up the pipeline of knowledge.  Let it flowing free so that we continue to elevate. 

If you want an extraordinary learning experience, be a teacher in any means.  You will become student of your students. 

Happy Learning,
Joe “Lifelong Learner” Vieira