2012 VoyagerSopris Blog Contest Winner
By Michelle George
I was listening to public radio recently and heard an interesting program about a school classroom in Japan. The reporter was an American observing the educational system in Japan, and he was a bit dismayed. He described how students were called one at a time to the front of the room to work math problems at old-school chalkboards. Things went predictably well until one student went to the board and was clearly struggling.
The student plodded through the equation and then stopped to check in with the teacher. All of the other students looked up from their desks and watched as she told him that the answer was incorrect. The young boy turned back to the board, erased his work, and began again while the other students went back to work at their desks. This happened several times. Each time the boy at the board was told he was incorrect, and he again turned back to the board to try again. The teacher made no move to correct his errors.
By the sixth round the American reporter was seriously agitated. This young student was being humiliated. No one moved to help him, and his peers had front row seats to the shaming experience. The reporter was readying himself to intervene when the struggling student turned to the teacher yet again. This time the teacher smiled and congratulated him on his achievement. His fellow students looked up, and when they saw his success, they rose to their feet and clapped enthusiastically. The now triumphant student beamed as he bowed and then returned to his desk amid the applause.
I was fascinated by the story. As an educator in the United States, I’ve been trained with countless strategies that support student success. I’ve learned to differentiate my lessons and scaffold reading materials for students. I provide graphic organizers, models, and guided rubrics to help students succeed. And I am confident that all of those strategies are good for learning. What I don’t do well, however, is let my students struggle. Rarely do I allow a kid to grapple with a problem beyond a minute or two. In fact I think many of us have encouraged our students to ask for help, and not stay stuck with a problem. I know this practice is with the best of intentions, but now I’m beginning to wonder about the underlying lesson I’ve been teaching.
I’m afraid that in my haste to protect my students from failure, I’ve taught them that to struggle and to fail are one and the same. More and more I see my students hit a wall and simply stop. If the reading is too hard, they don’t read. If the story problem is obtuse, they ask for the setup. I even see the pattern in my students’ play time. If a new video game is too challenging, they go online to find the “cheats.” If the basketball hoop is too high, they lower it to make scoring a bit easier. Those accommodations seem reasonable, but the underlying message is that success should be easy, and most times it’s not.
Many of the clichés of our role models can teach us that. Thomas Edison said, "Genius is one percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.”
The old proverb “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” comes from the British educational writer William Edward Hickson.
Basketball star Michael Jordan said, “I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
I know all of those sayings, but I sometimes forget to let my students discover that truth for themselves. So this year I’ve tweaked the popular British meme “Keep calm and carry on.” I’ve created a poster with an image of a brain on it with the words, “Keep calm and think on,” and posted it at the front of my classroom. I’ve intentionally chosen texts that I know will challenge my students, and I’ve encouraged them to dive in and flounder around a bit. I’m still teaching them the strategies to be successful with those texts, but I’m letting them struggle a bit.
In fact my seventh graders just read passages of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. The first time through the prologue, they were confounded and ready to write it off as gibberish. Now they are reading lines and acting the parts in ways that would make the old bard proud. They might not be ready for the stage, but they can explain what’s going on to their older classmates, and that accomplishment feels pretty good. Even more importantly they’ve learned that they can struggle and still learn something. I know that I’m going to keep that lesson in the front of my mind.
Michelle S. George is a language arts middle school teacher in Orofino, Idaho. She has a B.A. in English and secondary certification in English, reading, and journalism. Michelle has been teaching seventh and eighth grade for 20 years, and still loves going to school—as a teacher and a student. She has published a variety of lesson plans and written several award-winning grants.
