When you think you should already know it, how can you learn?
Unless they’re connected to electricity, they won’t light up. (Image by Pexels)
As part of our program for The Little Middle School and The Rulerless School, we’re making use of an online learning platform for certain topics.
For each lesson of this program, there is an explanation, written in the format of a graphic novel. There is also a short video.
Some students read the explanation and watch the video, and then they are able to successfully complete the lesson. Others go directly to the lesson. Unsurprisingly, they get stuck.
To solve this problem requires all the empathy I can muster as a teacher. I have to get inside the students’ heads. I need to figure out what they’re seeing that I’m not seeing.
I can easily understand why students might skip the reading and the video in an effort to save time. Or it might be that they don’t care about the topic at hand, so they’re not going to invest in learning. It might be that they are so demoralized by the pandemic they have lost their will to persist with challenges.
The trouble is, if they don’t know how to do the lesson, skipping the preparatory material isn’t actually saving them any time. I can see that they are making repeated attempts to push through without going any deeper.
These are clues that they care. It seems like they want to get things right, because they don’t just quit when they can’t do it right. Well, some students do, but others grow frustrated. And you only get frustrated when you care.
What seems to be happening is that these students seem to expect that whatever we are doing is already something that they know how to do. Even if they see that it is new, they expect to be able to do it even though they haven’t acquired any new tools or insights. They expect the necessary information and skills to be present in their bodies and minds already.
When it turns out that they aren’t automatically prepared for the new work, these students feel inadequate. They feel stupid. In order to avoid that feeling, they stop doing the work, ironically resisting the very thing that would help them to expand their knowledge and feel smarter.
In order to help these students succeed in this fraught situation, the content of the lesson might actually be beside the point. Instead, we need to engage students in conversation about the experience of learning and help them to develop strategies for dealing with the discomfort of not already knowing and understanding topic at hand. We must explicitly teach the idea that school is about learning new things, not just reinforcing what you already know.
When we do this, we see a reduction in the anxiety students might experience when they can’t do something on the first try. Students learn to talk about their feelings of inadequacy instead of putting up a front. And they learn that it’s okay to slow down, read the chapter, and even ask for help.
There are still problems to solve. We will have to address the reluctance that students will have to do the work when they don’t feel like it. And it’s entirely possible that the student will read the chapter and watch the video multiple times and still struggle. That is also normal, and it’s more than okay for them to seek and receive help from an actual person at that point.
We also might look for a way to address the root causes of some of the beliefs that students come to hold. Somewhere along the way, these students may have developed the idea that the “smart kids” must already know the stuff. Therefore, to be a “smart kid,” you’ve got to show that you already know it. The lessons in elementary classrooms about grit and Carol Dweck’s mindsets are a step in the right direction. Families can also have these discussions — and ensure that their children experience age-appropriate challenges regularly in the course of daily life.
My most important work as a teacher has not been to share the music, math, or history that comprises the curriculum, but to help students understand and accept their own learning process and habits. As they begin to dismantle unhelpful beliefs, students can replace them with beliefs and habits that serve them better. Then, learning the material itself goes just fine. They have everything they need.
