Albert Einstein’s Learning Community
(The second tier of The Pyramid of Teaching Success)

In the last two postings, we established the five blocks included in the bottom/foundational tier of The Pyramid of Teaching Success: Love, Balance, Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation (see attached). The cornerstones of Love and Balance will give a teacher the integrity to work all the way to the top of the Pyramid. Being a team player through Friendship, Loyalty, and Cooperation is the foundation for accelerated learning. We will see from Albert Einstein’s example, much of what a teacher needs to learn is in the minds of others. In order to harvest that knowledge, collaboration must take place, but a teacher must be prepared to be a valuable asset to that partnership through intense and thorough self-study. Besides being a committed collaborator, Einstein was great at individual study. His four principles for self study have had great influence on the four blocks of the second tier of the Pyramid. 

Albert Einstein’s Four Principles for Self-Study
When asked how he developed his Special Theory of Relativity, Albert Einstein said,

“I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent; curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism have brought me to my ideas.”

As a history teacher, are you curious and obsessed about the real reasons Abraham Lincoln tried to keep the Union together? As an English teacher, are you curious and obsessed with the mystery of spelling variations, to the depth of wanting to know the origin of the English Spelling System? As an elementary school teacher, are you curious and obsessed to the point where you exhaust all research material to discover the complexities of the various learning styles? As a coach, are you curious and obsessed to leave no stone unturned in learning all there is to know about developing an unselfish team? Like Einstein, combine that curiosity and obsession with endurance and self-criticism that won’t let you quit until the answers are found, and you will know what real self-study is.

But even Albert Einstein knew self-study was not enough to get to the answers; the rest of what he needed to know was in the minds of his fellow physicists.

Albert Einstein’s Learning Community
Einstein said, his principles for self-study,”…brought me to my ideas.” He knew, without combining his ideas with those of his colleagues, they would remain hypothetical “ideas.” There is evidence he created a “learning community” by bringing his concepts to his friends for discussion and conclusions. 

1. With Leopold Infeld, a Polish physicist, he co-wrote “The Evolution of Physics.” 
2. With Nathan Rosen, an Israeli-American physicist, he arrived at answers to the entangled wave functions and the EPR paradox.
3. With Peter Bergmann, a German-American physicist, he worked on the unified field theory.
4. With Wander Johannes De Haas, a Dutch physicist, he wrote the “Einstein-de Haas Effect.”
5. With Erwin Schrodinger, an Austrian physicist, he wrote the “Schrodinger gas model.” 
6. With Leo Szilard, a Hungarian physicist, he invented the Einstein Refrigerator.

The Second Tier of The Pyramid of Teaching Success
The four blocks in the second tier of The Pyramid of Teaching Success are all about individual improvement in preparation for collaboration, exactly as Einstein did. Albert’s principles, tailored for teaching, are:
1. Industriousness (dogged-endurance): Hard work based on careful planning
2. Curiosity: A deep desire to know why, not just how
3. Resourcefulness (obsession): Finding ways to get around and through obstacles
4. Self-examination (self-criticism): Seeking continuous improvement

Conclusion
A “learning community” may take the form of you and one other person or, better yet, a group. To become the best teacher you can be, learn everything you can on your own and then bring that to a “learning community” for discussion and conclusions. Like Coach Wooden says, “It’s what you learn, after you know it all, that counts.”

When Lewis Alcindor signed with UCLA, Coach Wooden picked the brains of every coach he knew that had been successful with a tall center. He also interviewed Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain. The next three years, UCLA won the NCAA championship.

When was head coach at a small college, after studying man-to-man defense extensively, I called Mike Krzyzewski and asked if I could spend three days with him learning defense. He said, “Yes.” My team won the national championship the next season.  

“Later in his career, John Dewey noted that one of the saddest things about American education is that the successes of excellent teachers tend to be born and die with them.” Harry and Rosemary Wong  www.teachers.net/wong.