Students -v- Learners

I came across this excellent post from David Warlick today.  I would encourage you to click on the link to read the whole post as this is just a quick summary of the table where David compares students and learners.  These are the points he makes that I feel are most relevant to what I have experienced as an international teacher.  I am reflecting on these in the light of our mission statement "Respect, Motivate, Achieve":

Respect:  students follow instructions from teacher and are competitive with other students, learners are part of a learning society and are collaborative with other students.
Motivate:  students work for the teacher and for grades (which David refers to as compensation) - they work because they have to, learners are motivated by the value of their work and a sense of accomplishment - they learn because they are curious.
Achieve:  Students are group-disciplined and objective-oriented with assessments measuring what the students have learned, learners are self-disciplined and goal-oriented and are learning in order to achieve, with assessments measuring what the learner can do with what has been learned.

Photo Credit:  Learner by Ben Werdmuller