How We Learn Group
If we understand how we learn, subsequently changing our learning institutions, then education and training will lead to a better future for all of us.
Our Story
We are parents, teachers, scholars, and business professionals who agree that a break from conventional theories of learning is needed to affect meaningful change in our societies.
Michele Shane
CO-FOUNDER
Michele Shane is Head of School at The Children’s House, an independent Montessori school in Traverse City, Michigan serving 230 students aged three months to 8th grade. She holds diplomas from University of Washington (BA Psychology), Loyola University (MEd), and Montessori Institute Northwest (AMI Primary diploma.) She is the previous President of the Board of Trustees of the Montessori Administrators Association (MAA), an organization that supports Montessori administrators in running high quality Montessori school. She is a co-founder of the How We Learn Group and has been involved since its inception in 2014.
Ed Petrick
CO-FOUNDER
Ed Petrick is curious, a searcher, and very much enjoys working with people. He has degrees from the University of Michigan (BS Science Engineering) and University of Chicago (MBA). He served as president of a family-owned manufacturing company for more than 20 years, and continues to be a part-owner. He served for several years as a board member and board president of a parent-run Montessori school. He also has children and grandchildren whose learning was significantly enhanced by the Montessori Method. He is a co-founder of the How We Learn Group and has been involved since its inception in 2014. He also volunteers in various capacities to support learning, environmental sustainability, and conservation of our planet’s assets.
Anthony Martire is an educator and a scholar of modern Italian culture. He currently serves on the faculty of the Scuola d’Italia Guglielmo Marconi, the only bilingual Italian/English liceo scientifico in North America. He formerly taught at the high school level in California, as well as at the University of Arizona and the University of California, Berkeley where he received his PhD. He has published and given public presentations in the US, Europe, and Australia, and his work covers a range of subjects from Cultural Studies to Vocational Education. He has been involved with the How We Learn Group since 2015.
RESEARCH & LEARNING SPECIALIST
Anthony Martire, Ph.D.
Jean Lave, Ph.D.
CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST
Dr. Jean Lave is a social anthropologist and the author of several books on how people learn, including the co-authored Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation, which grew out of her research on tailors and tailors’ apprentices in Liberia. She holds a BA in anthropology from Stanford University and a PhD in social anthropology from Harvard University. She is an accomplished professor, lecturer, and researcher and has received American Anthropological Association lifetime achievement awards from the Council on Anthropology and Education and from the Society for Psychological Anthropology. She is currently retired as a professor, but continues to write and lecture around the world. A co-founder of the How We Learn Group, she has been involved since its inception in 2014.
Working with this group has helped me see a broader picture and reveal truths of how people learn across age, culture, and societies well beyond the classroom.
Michele Shane
It would be wonderful if we could enhance society’s understanding of how we learn and help change society’s practices to conform with that. If we could transform our schools to put the focus on the learner—whether that’s a child or an adult—we could open the door to something entirely new. And it is my strong feeling that both society and the individuals who comprise it would benefit greatly.
Ed Petrick
If we can get a foothold in some public sphere, in society at large, we can have an important and positive effect. We need to be thinking of ways to enact [our] ideas about how people learn in real life—in the classroom and beyond the school to work and interpersonal relationships.