Back to school - Why did we stop?

Image features a vibrant "Back to School" theme with a colorful arrangement of school supplies such as pencils, scissors, rulers, and a backpack. The words "BACK TO SCHOOL" are prominently displayed in bold, 3D text, with each word in different shades of yellow, blue, and white. The background is a bright, solid blue. Photo by Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash

It is that time of year where parents around the country are thrilled to send their kids off to school, teachers are both thrilled to meet new students and terrified of being fired for using the wrong word, and and everyone else, like me, is pining for the chance to go back to school ourselves... Wait, not everyone else? Just me? huh... wonder why that is. It's almost like we've gone out of our way to convince people that learning is a chore that should be avoided at all costs.

How did we get here? I imagine there are more factors than can be counted, but I'll start with the low hanging fruit:

We turned school into a job, then never paid attention when the kids didn't want to work a full time job from when they are 5 years old.

Learning is supposed to be fun! Learning is supposed to make you feel good! Learning is supposed to help you understand the world around you better! But for most students out there learning is a chore that they have been assigned to do, don't really understand how to do, don't really understand what "right" means, and keep getting in trouble for not knowing how to do it "right". And from their perspective what do they get out of it? If they do well, they get to do more school! If not, they are told they will be a failure for life. No wonder most kids do everything they can to stop going to school as soon as they have the choice.

You'll never believe it, but this doesn't just apply to kids and schools... Somehow even though most of us can clearly remember how frustrating dealing with school was, we managed to make it even harder to continue learning in our careers. Now, we're told we're still expected to keep learning every day as if it was our full time job like we were in school, but we're also told that we need to be doing our full time jobs as well. We're told that if we don't keep growing and improving every year our review scores will reflect that, but rarely are told what improving means or provided the resources to do so. We're told that if we fall behind our teams anywhere our job is on the line, but often any time dedicated to personal development or training is the first to be cut when schedules get tight (And when was the last time you saw a schedule NOT get tight?). And we're told that despite the fact that our jobs are demanding these things we are either on our own to learn them, or if we're lucky someone who has worked in the job for a few more weeks than us points us in the right direction...

So how do we do better? The easiest and most effective solution is pretty straight forward: Hire someone passionate about learning, teaching, has the skill set to train on a wide breadth of subjects, and give them the ability to do their job how they need to. Or consult with them (hey there).

Alright, how do we do better without the budget to hire a consultant with a soothing bass voice and "mom energy"? (why do people keep telling me this...) The easy way here is to create a culture that sees learning as a real part of the job, and not as something that takes away from work. This means leaders championing attendance of training programs, this means setting the priority of attending a training at the same level as closing out tasks during a sprint, this means celebrating any learning milestone someone reaches with more than a "Bill is now certified as a scrum master, and our defect count is up this week" (maybe something like "After fighting to get a spot in one of the insanely popular Inclusive Agile programs, Bill is now our 17th Certified Inclusive Agileist on the team! We're so thrilled to have been able to invest in Bill learning these things, and would like Bill to take some time this week to share some key learning with us! Bill, I've always thought of you as a son, and this certification is even more motivation for me to try and adopt both you and your 2 legged cat Bill")

This is one of the changes that needs to come from leadership though, because if leaders in an organization aren't showing complete support for investing time in training, the changes will never happen. And think of poor Bill, he needs a forever home.

What are some other ways you've seen an organization create a supportive "back to school" culture? Or what do you wish your organization would do to support learning? What made you want to stop going to school, or what made you want to keep going?! Am I alone is actually missing being a student full time? Can I send you information about adopting a 2 legged cat named Bill? Turns out his owner is struggling at work...

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