There’s a popular saying that goes something like, I was today years’ old when I learned ____. These examples are great, as many of them are funny and relatable, but more importantly, they model the power of new learning and the delight of discovery when new information is revealed. 

We are in a time when many fixed mindsets, entrenched facts, and narrow views, with algorithmic assistance, limit our access to new learning or possibilities. And, there is an abundance of new information, questions and experiences being shared. To combat limited understanding, we need to adopt a Revelatory Mindset: a mind that is always open, curious, experiences awe, and seeks a connection between what we know to be true and what we continue to learn and experience.

Revelatory Mindset is Humble

To shift to and maintain a Revelatory Mindset, there must be acceptance of new knowledge, new possibilities, and other perspectives. Revelatory Mindset is humble, journeying alongside the earth and community and open to what it can see and make sense of every day. Revelatory Mindsets are not ego-driven or definitive. Revelatory Mindset is open to change and finds value in new information and shifts in learning. It is constantly curious, and settled in a state of wonder and opportunity, not afraid of what it doesn’t know or what mistakes it might make.  

Revelatory Mindset aligns the Heart, Soul and Mind

In an era of mass access to “intelligence” and information, the journey to deep knowledge and relationship goes beyond the mind and into the heart and soul. Revelatory Mindset is connected with the whole body, and in relationship with the earth and community. When we develop our mindsets in connection with our whole selves, with confidence in our whole growth and development, and in relationship with the natural world and our community, we move through learning in full alignment. In our research of educational models across the country, as the Revelatory Learning & Assessment framework was being born, we saw this deep alignment in several communities of learning that serve primarily indigenous communities like Malama Honua Public Charter School and DEAP.  Learners at both of these inspiring schools experience learning models that are rooted in the connection between heart, soul, mind, and land. This type of intentional alignment within a school model can invite learners to create their own unique connections between themselves and their learning, and foster a Revelatory Mindset within and outside of the walls of school.  People with fully aligned hearts, souls and minds are persistent, capable and dependable. When we develop and sustain a Revelatory Mindset, we are good friends, supportive classmates and colleagues, reliable neighbors and active citizens. When we review current trends of students experiencing loneliness, disengagement, and lacking purpose, Revelatory Mindset is a counternarrative to those dilemmas. 

Revelatory Mindset Meets the Moment

Revelatory Mindset is a present mindset. It holds time, intention and attention in the moment. Revelatory Mindset is interested and engaged with new information, conversations, experiences and the physical world. Revelatory Mindset holds the present and reflects on previous learning and experiences. The capacity of a Revelatory Mindset expands beyond urgency and fear, and trusts the process of growth through habits of relationship building, reflection, connection and openness. 

Revelatory Mindset is Essential for all Roles in Learning Communities

Knowing the essential role the Revelatory Mindset plays in learning communities, we must explore how we get to a place of Revelatory Mindset. Many educators are experienced and trained in a compliance and fixed mindset that must be shifted and enlightened. But in order to move toward a Revelatory Mindset, we cannot persist in the modalities of compliance by forcing or training a new mindset.  Instead, we need to invite a new way to think about our work and our relationships within the structures of learning environments. We need to reflect and learn more deeply into how our mind is aligned and what shifts we can make, and new ways of being can cultivate a Revelatory Mindset in our work and collaborations in learning communities. We offer this initial inventory for you and your team to consider using to help open up your thinking and help identify individual and collective priorities to experience and contemplate in your practice towards the Revelatory Mindset. 

Revelatory Mindset Frees Your Mind

Revelatory Assessment is all about liberation and freedom- for fully aligned authenticity and opportunity for each and every student in our learning communities. When we cultivate learning spaces with a Revelatory Mindset, we are in a free mind, an open mind, an aligned mind with synergy and connection to other people and the environment. The freedom of being in authentic relationship, wanting and willing for what is possible with those we learn alongside is what many of us in education work seek, but struggle to experience. Big Picture Learning has a school model, leadership framework and international collaboration fully aligned to authenticity and opportunity for each student. Students are the curriculum in Big Picture Schools. When we free ourselves from unnecessary constraints, the ghosts of schooling past, and the fear from fixed constructs in learning and in community, we find the liberatory and abundant world of deep learning and connection. Through building a Revelatory Mindset and cultivating this mindset in others, we hear the sound of the genuine within us, and are no longer at the end of strings being pulled by other forces.