Strong and confident
Burls result from injury or stress to a tree. They are sought after in woodworking. (Image by Thomas)
If you were to break your leg, it would be a terrible idea to try to walk on it.
The bones would be unable to bear your weight, and you would likely cause additional damage just by trying.
Once the broken bone is realigned and healing has begun, you would likewise disrupt the process if you were to attempt to walk without the assistance of crutches.
However, once the bones have knit together sufficiently, walking will help strengthen your muscles and restore you to full function.
A skilled physical therapist will be conservative about introducing load-bearing exercises and will work to stretch and strengthen the muscles of the leg to prepare them for this work before it happens. But once healing and rehabilitation is complete, exercise will continue to make the leg stronger.
As a teacher and coach, I think about this a lot. Particularly in the realm of math, there have been many instances in which trying to teach a student a new concept felt like asking them to put their weight on a broken tibia. They had no confidence in themselves and little or no foundation upon which to build new knowledge.
A student like this has likely suffered an emotional injury and needs to go through a healing and recovery process analogous to what they might experience after a physical injury.
Unfortunately, school math curricula aren’t set up for this. The material in each lesson builds on previous material, and the stakes get higher. The result, for so many students, is not just a lack of math knowledge and skill but a sense of despair and shame about their ability to ever attain that knowledge and skill.
For such students, pushing them to meet a particular standard they are unprepared for results in total shutdown. Instead of improving, they get even worse. They are no longer sure about the things they used to feel like they knew.
Drills and practice won’t help until the injury begins to heal. Then, gently, exercises can be introduced to help the student recover their existing knowledge and expand on it.
For the healing leg, body weight is a destructive force when applied at the wrong time and a constructive one when the time is right.
For the healing student, math triggers anxiety and fear in the wrong context or at the wrong level of difficulty. But when the student is ready and the work matches the student’s level of skill, the student’s confidence will be bolstered by the success.
Any medicine, including food, is poison when taken in the wrong dose or at the wrong time. I believe this also goes for a lot of the advice we receive and certain conventional patterns or societal expectations.
If you’ve been struggling to live up to a particular standard, align your life or work with a set of expectations (whether yours or someone else’s), or follow a certain program, it may be that you have some strengthening or healing work to do or something foundational to learn as a prerequisite.
Even if there is nothing wrong with what you’re being offered, it may not be showing up at the right time for you. If something that is supposed to be helpful is frustrating or demoralizing, it may be the equivalent of trying to stand on that injured leg before it’s ready.
Taking a modified path can help prepare you for the thing you want to do. It may feel like a setback, but continuing to push on the injured area creates the real setback. Finding additional support and making accommodations and where you need them is its own kind of progress.
There is no way to rush healing. Trying to do so is counterproductive. When we see the signs of injury, we must rest and recover. After that, we can carefully work around the sensitive areas until deliberately putting them to the test makes us progressively more strong and confident. But not until then.
