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Louis7 was born in 1809 in a small village just east of Paris. He was the youngest of four, and his mother and father worked the countryside making things out of leather. By all accounts, Louis had a wonderful experience growing up, even after the accident that occurred when he was only three years old.
In his father’s workshop, Louis was trying to make some holes in the leather using a tool called an awl. The awl looked like a sharp-pointed screwdriver and was used to make such things as belt holes. While he was pressing it into a piece of leather, the awl slipped and caught Louis in the eye. He was rushed to be seen by surgeons, but the doctors could not save his eye, and they put a patch on it. Weeks later Louis’s other eye became infected, and by the age of five he had lost all sight.
In part because of his young age, Louis did not realize that he had lost his sight. His parents said that he would ask why it was so dark, as the child seemed confused about being blind.
Louis’s parents did not hold him back. He was not treated as disabled and instead learned to travel around the village and country paths with various canes his father had created for him. He continued to learn, tinker, and create despite the loss of sight. His teachers and local villagers continued to help him learn until, at the age of ten, Louis attended the Royal Institute for Blind Youth.
While there, Louis learned about a communication system called night writing, devised by Captain Charles Barbier of the French Army. The system, which was a series of complicated dots and dashes impressed into paper for communicating without light (and without sound), was extremely complex.
However, by the age of fifteen, Louis Braille had taken these ideas and developed his own system for reading and writing for the blind, aptly named the Braille System.
Louis Braille went on to be an inventor, professor, and musician who continued to fine-tune the Braille System until his passing in 1852. Still, Braille did not become widely used until years later when it was seen as a revolutionary way to adapt languages across the world.
Louis Braille is only one example of what happens when learners are encouraged and motivated to solve problems that matter to them and dive into interests that are relevant to their own lives.
There was every reason in the world for Louis to live a life devoid of creating, designing, building, and inventing. He was not from a wealthy family. He had lost his vision at a young age. He lived in a time where many saw education as a privilege and not a right.
But Louis’s story can serve as a reason for us to focus on giving kids the knowledge and skills to pursue their passions, interests, and future.
Truth #1 is the reason we educate students. It’s for their benefit.
But it only matters to our students when they own the learning. When we give students choice, allow for inquiry, and foster creativity, we see the amazing things they can do.
Technology plays an interesting role in student ownership. That device in their pockets has all the information in the world. It can connect them to anyone, allow for collaboration, and be used for a variety of innovative purposes.
As teachers, we have to embrace the notion that technology can open up a world of learning opportunities and then give our students the chance to own those opportunities.
Truth #2 comes from a quote I (A.J.) first heard Tom Murray say on stage: “Every child in your class is someone else’s whole world.”
As a parent who now has a child in school, this really hits home for me as I watch my daughter leave for school every day. Empowered learning brings us closer together through communication tools, real-time collaboration, and sharing meaningful and relevant work that brings the learning to life.
But it does more than that. It transforms our social/human connections with little moments that can make a kid’s day or make a parent proud.
Truth #3 is all about the story.
It’s one of the best ways to teach and a favorite way of ours to learn. Stories have passed the test of time, and continue to enlighten and motivate people every day to learn and grow.
Our current world has transformed storytelling. Technology expands our depth of story and allows us to share stories wider and farther than ever before. When something goes “viral,” it means a story has struck a chord and reached millions of people unlike at any other time in history. As teachers and students, we can use technology to transform our storytelling and how we learn.
The true power of a story comes from two things: learning from the story and then sharing your story with an audience and with the world. Empowered learners know stories are the gateway to pursuing their passions and future.
Truth #4 is something I firmly believe and try to say every time I speak at a conference or school. As mentioned earlier, our job as teachers is to help students prepare themselves for anything. To frame this as a story, we are the guides, and our students are the heroes of the story.
When we don’t know what the future holds for our students, our job changes. Teachers can be guides who empower learners because we can be free of always having to be the content experts (especially as content continually changes). Instead, we share with our students that we ,too, are master learners. Knowing how to learn is a skill we can share with our students to help them learn anything.
Truth #5 is based around this quote: “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.”8
Empowered students are part of a learning environment where unlearning and relearning is the norm. This type of environment is where we can get new information and analyze it, apply it, and use it to create or evaluate. Empowered learners adopt a mindset that praises unlearning and relearning and treats the process as a continuum.
Truth #6 is something all of us who work in education know: We have an impact. We make a difference. It’s why we got into this profession in the first place, and it’s what keeps us here and moving even on the hardest days.
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