“If you’re in such a hurry, why don’t you ride your bike instead of walking it?”

“I don’t have time to stop and get on!”

I don’t remember where I heard or saw this joke, but it has stuck with me for decades. And I think of it often as a teacher and coach. What is it that causes so many of us to do things the hard way, pushing through without the necessary information or resources?

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When I started designing a school curriculum, my intent was to make things fun whenever possible.

After all, learning is fun. Why shouldn’t school be fun?

I added brain teasers, puzzles, and games to the menu — and discovered that they did nothing to entice reluctant students. They felt just the same way about the supposedly “fun” activities as they did about the straightforward “read this chapter and answer the questions” assignments. They inspired dread, mostly.

I had overlooked a basic paradox of education: The puzzles designed to make learning fun are only fun for the learners who are already having fun.

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Somewhere along the line, some of us got the message that we have to be perfect to be loved or worthy.

It can be tough to live with, especially if we don’t consciously realize that we’re carrying this weight with us all the time.

Daily existence becomes a precarious scramble up a mountain path where both sides are crumbling into nothing. To be wrong is to fall into the darkness. One false move and we’re plunging into the abyss, where no one can save us.

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“I just don’t remember learning this,” the student said in frustration, slumping over her math book.

My colleague could only say the truth, as absurd as it sounded. “You don’t remember learning this because you’ve…never learned it before. This is the first time.”

After a couple of years of reviewing and remediating, it was hard for this student to see that the concepts in front of her were new. It required a shift in attitude from her: Instead of a determination to persist even though she felt like she “should already know this by now,” she now had to adopt a sense of curiosity and openness to the unfamiliar.

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Teachers my have a reputation for torturing students, but many students do just fine torturing themselves.

Underlying many of our most painful experiences in growth and learning is an unnecessary belief that, once released, opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Often unstated by adults because it might be buried a bit deeper, we can count on kids to express this belief right out loud, which helps them get over it faster.

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