Rethinking Learning Podcast

Rethinking Learning Podcast


Episode #60: Start with Why and Stay with Why with Dr. Jim Rickabaugh

January 07, 2019

Dr. Jim Rickabaugh serves as the Senior Advisor to the Institute for Personalized Learning, an education innovation lab dedicated to the transformation of public education. Jim formerly served as the Director of the Institute for six years and as a superintendent in several districts in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Jim is the author of Tapping the Power of Personalized Learning: A Roadmap for School Leaders and co-author of Five Levers To Improve Learning: How To Prioritize For Powerful Results In Your School. I have been fortunate to participate in several summits with Jim, attend his sessions at conferences, and collaborate on blogs about personalized learning. I learned some new things about Jim in the podcast. Enjoy!
 
You and your family
We are a family of educators. My wife, Lynn, has been a math tutor for a long time and so supportive of the work I’m doing. Our oldest son, Jay, with a newly minted Ph.D., is a professor at Appalachian State University. Our daughter, Christine, is an early childhood educator. I have spent more than 45 years in education with more than 20 years as a superintendent. I loved that. The work I’ve done for the last ten years around personalized learning has actually become all consuming and a fun journey.
What it was like for you as a student/learner
I tend to be an achiever. For me, a school was all about if a task or challenge was set up, I would go after it. When I think back to my experiences in education, what was missing often was the connection to purpose. Rarely, do I recall a specific or compelling purpose around learning? Being an achiever, my focus typically was around doing well on the test and getting good grades. I was fortunate to do well most of the time. The downside of that was how much I forgot because I learned it for the test, not for its inherent benefit or for other value it brought to me. Not that I forgot everything, but I saw the same thing happening with my students.
Jim Rickabaugh: “Getting Learning Right the First Time, Every Time”
When we learn for the task if that’s the driver or if we say  “you need to know this will be on the test” and the test is over, too often what was learned is let go. It’s an unfortunate consequence for learning. The sad part is that even the act of learning tended to be very linear and focused what was going to be on the test. In the process, we ignored and failed to explore so much that would have been interesting, compelling, and enriching. No one ever thought to stop and talk about why we were learning that was value for us. Every once in a while, something would come along like a project or a concept that was so powerful that it transformed all of that and become a really meaningful thing. Unfortunately, that experience was more the exception that it was the rule.
Your journey as an educator
I’m the first educator among my parents and siblings. The choice to go into education was driven by two things. I wanted to make a difference in children’s lives and two there were educators I admired who were brilliant people who impacted me. One, in particular, was in eighth grade. We were doing a project exploring careers. I was having difficulty finding a topic, and my teacher, Mr. David Kitch, said to me, “Jim, you really should think about going into education. I think you’d make a great teacher.” I admired Mr. Kitch as a great teacher, and if he thinks I would make a great teacher, I should pay attention to that. 25 years later, I was visiting the school district I attended and Mr. Kitch was retiring that year. I was so appreciative of his encouragement and advice that I took time to call him and thank him. Mr. Kitch remembered me but didn’t remember the comment and was shocked that it made such an impact for me. For me, it was a driving force because he was such a brilliant teacher.
If teachers only knew how much they made a difference in children’...