How Do Your Students Meet Moments of Challenge?
This series of blogs is taken from articles by Charles Debelak in the Birchwood School of Hawken's Clipboard during the 2017-18 school year. The purpose of Mr. Debelak's Clipboard articles is to provide parents with information about sound educational principles and child development issues gleaned from history, contemporary research, and Mr. Debelak's 40+ years educating, coaching, and counseling children, young adults, and parents.
Motivating and Deep Learning
Understanding the Connections
We understand that learning deeply and expansively in any domain of knowledge requires struggle, determination, and perseverance. The pathway for deeper learning is arduous work. Natural curiosity, as I described in previous blogs, and the motivation associated with natural curiosity, will not necessarily provide the energy for successful learning. Children discover that although they might love reading or mathematics, if they hope to grow in these areas, then work is required; work that they often do not wish to do.
The child who loves numbers in primary school, may balk at the memorization of multiplication facts or developing fluency in computing mixed fractions. This work can be tedious and even boring, nevertheless, it is a requirement if the student hopes to progress in mathematics and thereby experience a greater enjoyment of mathematics through growth and competency. The experience will be similar in reading, writing, or science. Good teachers engage their students in subject matter and create an excitement around learning. Good teachers not only teach subject material, but they also infuse a love for the domain. They connect students subjectively to subject content.
Learning by nature, however, is not stagnant. It is progressive, and progress always requires some degree of hard work. It requires persistence, diligence, and a measure of self-discipline. Any meaningful progress in learning always requires struggle. It calls for work that students may not want to do. Yet a teacher knows that if her students will embrace the struggle, her students will discover a greater appreciation and enjoyment of the subject. In fact, the good teacher recognizes that if her students do not learn how to work hard and push through challenging assignments, their initial love of learning will fade. Her students will become disinterested, even in areas of learning that initially sparked their natural curiosity in early childhood.
By necessity, if learning continues in an upward trajectory, each child learns that there will be a time for struggle to acquire new knowledge and new competencies. Success will call for the development of new skills and deeper understanding. Meaningful progress “hurts” a little bit. It might even result in failure. At the same time, children can learn to understand that these moments of hardship are necessary for greater successes and satisfaction in learning.
Good teachers and schools that acknowledge this challenge, build strong support systems. They provide guidance so that students learn and embrace the difficult lessons embedded in disciplined, hard work. They also teach students how to be resilient, that not only success is part of the learning process, but so is failure. Great education acknowledges this learning dilemma and teaches children how to meet moments of challenge and how to embrace the struggle. There is no doubt, at least in my experience, that if the teacher and child persevere through the ups and downs of learning more deeply and more expansively, the progress that follows arduous learning is one of the most rewarding human experiences. Children discover that it feels good to work hard. It is rewarding to do a task well. It creates an enduring sense of pride.
I should note here, that this experience is arduous not only for the student, but also for we teachers and parents. Since we adults are asking children to embrace a wearisome process, an experience that young students have never experienced, children will resist the deeper lessons. They will argue, complain, cry, and even claim that we – their teachers or parents – are mean and do not love them. That’s the price we have to pay for the sake of our students and children.
Ironically therefore, it will be us – the parents and teachers – who will need even greater grit and resilience than the student, because if the child is to discover the satisfaction of hard work and a job well done, it will be on the back of our love, support, dedication, and endurance.
