Being Educated

If I had been asked, years ago, what being educated means I would have said being able to recite facts by heart, ones that have been mastered by rote memory. Fast forward to this day, knowing what I know now, my answer has changed. Education to me means to explore concepts, to think, to try to find the truth, even if I end up finding out that I still don't know enough or everything. To always be open and curious.

It's that spirit of open-minded inquiry that we hope for every Learner who enters our doors to take with them into adulthood. This is what it means to be educated and it's a process that's never ever complete. That is why we don't teach, we guide. We may know the direction, not so we can race ahead of them and, arrogantly, show them the way, but rather in order to maintain pace alongside them, offering authentic questions we don't know the answers to ourselves, wondering with them as they explore the amazing process of their own minds at work, experimenting, trying, and exploring. The fact is, we learn so much from them than they will ever learn from us. We never stop learning.