foreign [Music] [Applause] guys I'm nervous because I have a couple hundred people looking at me and my brother called this morning and he said Ashley when you go on the stage just be yourself like Renita said so I want to know if you guys have heard of the nursery rhyme the Five Little Monkeys y'all y'all heard of that okay so each one Monkey Jumped and all the other monkeys followed suit what about have you guys heard about the saying Monkey C Monkey do y'all heard that okay so these monkeys they teach us the importance of
the role of social learning in our lives social learning takes place every day you guys are watching me and my hope is that you'll learn something 365 days a year we are constantly absorbing data adults and parents we have to understand that we we are the models and our actions teach children how to behave or how not to behave so with social learning each and every one of us learn from the things that we observe I want you to imagine a young child watching her mother prepare dinner so the mom's in the kitchen whipping up
a meal and the child goes into the cabinet and she gets a pan and she gets a utensil and she begins to imitate the behaviors that she sees her mother doing this is social learning the problem is that adults hammer education schooling and the infamous question what would you like to be when you grow up as if kids really know when I was about 10 years old I was at a reunion with my uncle and he said he always had a challenging question so he said Ashley I want you to tell me what order these
three words go in he said knowledge wisdom and understanding I had no clue what he was talking about so I said I just repeated what he said and I said first is knowledge then is wisdom then is understanding he said not quite but I want you to try again so I said okay knowledge understanding and then wisdom he said absolutely knowledge is content understanding is comprehension of that content and wisdom is when you are able to learn from the actions of others so what I was able to learn from my life experiences is when I
typed in to the knowledge of those around me I was able to really live through their their experiences and there's this thing called self-doubt so self-doubt is something that I have struggled with regardless of how successful I become or how many degrees I have I have four um but I had to realize that people are still watching me just like you all and that my actions matter so one of my mentors sent me a message and she said Ashley I want you to know that you're a trendsetter my thought was who me she said you're
a trendsetter and people may not understand what you do or why you're doing what you do or even how you're doing the things that you're doing and I thought wow maybe people really do see me and then I received a social media message from one of my followers and she said it is because I have listened to you and I've watched you that I now know what it is that I want to do with my life I'm like from watching me or maybe it was that one time when my eight-year-old daughter said Mommy can we
go to Dubai for my ninth birthday no no listen she's traveled internationally she's been to about 10 or 11 countries so I thought what an amazing question but I don't know if she knows how costly Dubai is and so I asked her Nyla are you going to buy the ticket and she looked at me and I looked at her we didn't go to Dubai for my birthday covet happened so what I've realized also is that people watch you all as well in life you may not think that people are watching you but they are in
our education system it lacks creativity it lacks connectedness and it lacks relationship building we have got to incorporate social learning into our school systems I hated school growing up I was literally from one school to the next school and it just seemed like instability to me that may not be your story but it was it's mine I'm I'm up here so it's my story um then I had to say that there were three things that I wanted when I was a child I wanted to play with my friends I wanted to eat all of my
favorite snacks and I also kind of kind of want to be an adult because adulting seemed pretty cool did you guys want to be an adult when you grow up maybe not but then something happened in my life and I actually became an adult so now I just want two things I want to see how I can be a kid again if that's even possible and I also want to see how to incorporate regular routine naps into my daily schedule you know those naps that we used to fight and try to run from as kids
because we thought we'd missed something well now that I'm adult I'm trying to figure out how how I can do this again right because adulting is not cool so what I've seen as a child I thought it was what I wanted and then I came here and I realized this is not really what I wanted can I reverse the hands of time and try to possibly learn a little bit more so I told you about the story earlier with my uncle that story helped me to understand that we have to learn how to be present
in the presence of others that is where the real magic happens we have to learn how to Grant ourselves permission to not be on social media to not scroll because we might just miss something that we need wisdom is learning from the actions of others is what my uncle told me and so our role in the community we can do many things but I just want to tell you about three things that you can do to promote social learning in your environment you can get a group of like-minded people together you can mentor the kid
down the street that wants to do something wants to learn how to do something that you have expertise in or you can teach someone about your personal life experiences school systems don't teach us these things they have very strict requirements on the curriculums and estate guidelines and so with these with these curriculums and state guidelines many times the traditional classroom setting restricts what it is that children can learn and so I'm doing my part I'm starting within my home and I'm being an example for those that watch me like you all hoping that you'll learn
something and I just want to let you know that you also can do your part so in my closing I want you all to know that your actions matter whether you think someone is watching or someone is not watching I want you to know that someone is always watching so I want you to be the change that you want to see in the world I'm Dr Ashley low Simmons and this is the magic of social learning thank you
