Life Long Learning with Stephen Hurley

Whenever a person interviews for any position in education, and I mean any position - it's expected that the person must say, "I'm a life long learner."   I've always smiled at the expression.  Not just because it's become hackneyed, but because there is no alternative.  Everyone is a life long learner, whether they like it or not.  Every single day, everyone learns from their experiences, even if it's something as simple as confirming that you still don't like watermelon or lima beans.  It's the nature of our existence.

I suppose a better expression would be something like, "I still enjoy learning things, and I expect that that will continue until the day I die."  But even that goes without saying, because the alternative to it is, "I've learned enough at your age here and I don't really want to learn anything more.  I'm tired of learning."  You're not going to be hired as a new teacher, principal, superintendent or director by saying that.

Anyway, the reason I'm writing this post is that I learned an awful lot by writing and publishing my book, and then I continued to learn things through the marketing and selling of it.  And I continue to learn more each day.  Most recently, due to the interest of Mr. Stephen Hurley at www.voicEd.ca, I've learned how to record my stories to help him publish them as a podcast, a sort of audio book.  I had to purchase a pretty nice microphone and a decent set of headphones, but then, via the telephone and computer, Stephen guided me through the process of recording the stories and then uploading them to him so he could clean them up and then add some appropriate introductory and closing music before publishing them at voicEd.ca. (If you'd like, you could head over there and check them out.  They're all pretty good, and I've learned to actually enjoy hearing my voice.)  It was all a great lot of fun for me. 

Like me, Stephen Hurley is a retired educator.  I'm positive that he was an excellent one, because he's continued to stay involved and  he is excellent at making even an old guy like me feel as though I can master the skills necessary to get involved in podcasting, story recording and being a somewhat recurring guest on a radio show.  And he's also made the experiences enjoyable.  I don't know how many of these things were related to his job as a teacher, but they certainly prove that, like me, Stephen is a life long learner.