Building a learning environment

Bean-bag pillows, rugs, coffee, doughnuts, music playing, people browsing through books and other media materials in the library area, others clustering together on the rug-informally interacting, creating ideas, class members recording notes on various learning centers around the room, people of all ages moving through the room .... The setting of a university classroom? Certainly not in the traditionallyaccepted sense. The description above represents what can and did happen when higher education digresses from the tell 'em-test 'em routine, or from the approach of Do as I say, not as I do. The result? Probably the most exhilarating and exciting educational venture we have ever experienced-one in which the teaching/learning process was the message. call it process education, in which each person takes individual responsibility for designing one's own learning and, subsequently, commits oneself to it. In essence, we're saying, We have the tools for you; take them and move. Process yourself; what are your needs and goals? Introspect, question, wonder, do something out of the ordinary, and then share your creativity and uniqueness so that we too can learn . . . and perhaps even help you to grow further. The products most assuredly emerged in our class, but the final projects were the outcome of the aliveness and involvement which had preceded them. Quality teacher education and retraining are similar to a good, open classroom atmosphere for children. If teachers expect to be responsible people relating effectively with students, parents, and staff members, then they must relate in the same manner through their college preparation/in-service programs. If we move away from the pattern of authoritarianism and command relationships toward guided self-discipline in teaching children, then teacher education should lead in viewing teaching as a helping, releasing, exchanging process. In our class, we adapted the ideas of open-education for children to the education and retraining of

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