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A colleague of mine recently asked me: "What does learning look like?"

The question caught me like a chew toy in a Jack Russell Terrier's jaws. I was all shook up. It made me restless.

I know what familiar thinking and learning looks like. I know how to identify and shape typical thinking and learning. I can create mindless and easily recognizable templates of learning in my sleep. But I also know that when I am at my best I can recognize fresh and invigorating learning, learning that stretches the edge of what was once not known. I can even sometimes shape and invite that. But I have to be willing to do that and keep myself on edge to that. I have to be willing to keep the learner on the edge. This happens best in a community of learners and teachers, who agree to challenge one another, to push one another.

If education is about learning to think differently, then why do we spend so much time and energy in education defending what is familar? To think in the same way? To talk and think the same way?

I realize that all learning cannot be as revolutionary as Paulo Freire would like. But a little revolution goes a long way. We need to awaken the minds and the consciousness of our students and ourselves as we learn together.

It's not a simple mutual exchange. But it is mutual, and it is an exchange, of sorts.

We need to have the courage to push for our own voices, for each other's voices.

What would that sound like? Look like?