Experience and Respect

In this past weeks facilitation on the attribute Experience in Adult Learning, I began to see how each attributes are beginning to intertwine. Experience is key in learning, but with this attribute doesn't include only positive aspects. There are plenty of negative aspects that become of our experiences. Though this may be the case, without negative experiences, we as individuals could not continue to grow. Both positive and negative experiences bring about an outlook that shapes who we are and who we will become. With experience also comes the biased view that we may have. This bias is often hard to break without the will to change. I have been a master in Tae Kwon Do since I was seventeen years old. Often times when teaching classes that include adults who are twenty or thirty years older than I, comes a sort of resistance. It is often that older adults don't really want to learn from someone much younger than them. Though I've been doing Tae Kwon Do for twenty years, I still have much more to learn; I will never stop learning. Many of the adults may not understand that I've been state champion as well as national champion and junior Olympic champion (which is just a step done from the Olympics and includes the best of the best from around the world) multiple times throughout my life. Older adults may have a bias that believes that they can't learn from someone younger than themselves. For me, this is a challenge that I never back down from and I always come out the better person for having changed someones mindset. This website provides a great look into how our environment shapes our experience and thus our perception. The last bit of this blog entry is going to be on respect. In both my Adult Learning and Instructional Technology in the 21st Century classes are full of respect. Each and every person in both of my classes are respectful to each other. I have never experienced this in any of my undergraduate classes. Everyone is so happy to tell each other great job and to always help out. It's refreshing to see that people like this still exist in this world and I'm truly happy to be a part of this family.