For every educator who’s ever said, “I already do that,” and didn’t recognize it as giving up
Here’s a sentence I would never say to a four-year-old:
“You’ve done enough learning. You’re finished. There’s nothing left for you to figure out.”
And yet I hear the adult version of that sentence from educators all the time.
I was at a conference recently, sharing strategies I’ve spent years refining in real classrooms. A few people walked up to me afterward and said some version of the same thing:
“Oh, I already do this.”
“I’ve taken all the workshops.”
“I’ve read all the books.”
“I’ve hit the highest level of our QRIS. I’m good.”
I smiled. I nodded. But inside, I was thinking the same thing I want to say to you now:
No, you don’t. And no, you’re not.
The contradiction at the heart of our field
Picture a four-year-old at the easel. She’s trying to paint something specific, a dog, maybe, or her mom, and it’s not coming out the way she sees it in her head. She slumps. She says, “I can’t do it.”
How do you respond?
“Keep trying.”
“What if you tried a different brush?”
“What were you hoping it would look like?”
We coach her through frustration because we want her to learn that mistakes are information, that challenges are how we grow, and that being stuck is temporary.
We want her to develop a growth mindset.
We would never look at that child and say, “You’re right. You can’t. Stop trying.”
We would never look at a child who just finished a puzzle and say, “Congratulations. That’s the last thing you’ll ever learn.”
We would never tell a child she has reached her maximum capacity.
So why do we say it to ourselves?
When I first started teaching, I thought I needed to control everything. Where the children played, what they could play with, how long they could play in certain centers.
I knew this was how educators operate because that’s how I was taught. And my education classes didn’t teach me a different way. So that’s what I did, too.
Only it didn’t work.
The children did not like being told where they could play, when they had to rotate, or what toys they could use. They rebelled. Not so much with words, but in their actions.
They ignored my hand claps and singing when I determined it was time for everyone to rotate. They got bored when I limited the toys they could use. They started nudging each other, wiggling and falling out of their chairs. A few children went so far as to get up and wander around the room, or push their way into another group of children.
But I was convinced that this was the right way. It was the only thing I knew. I taught like this for two years, and became increasingly frustrated.
And then a colleague shared a new strategy with me.
Read the full post on Substack.
Recent Comments