Adapting Our Practice

Adults are slow learners.  Not all the time but there are definitely moments, as teachers, when we sure are.

In the classroom we often hear teachers figuratively banging their head against the proverbial brick wall when a student cannot grasp a concept or a piece of knowledge that they have told them over and over again.  It's not the child.  They are not the slow learner here.

Adapting our practice is paramount to student success.  Changing the status quo in order to find the missing puzzle piece for a child should be foremost in our teachers' minds as they contemplate why a student isn't achieving success, or what they can do to make a difference to how a student learns.  For teachers this can mean stepping out of their comfort zone, onto some unidentifiable twig thin branch.  Walking a tightrope between what we are used to and the unknown realm of possibility.

How often do we teach as we like to be taught, in ways that we understand, on topics that we find interesting?  Adapting our practice means learning to let go of this.  Stepping into the unknown and out into the uncertain.  Trying new things.  Asking a new set of questions from an endless ocean of answers.  Being brave.

If we are to truly nurture a child to their full potential the go-to proverbial brick wall needs to come down.  Our head banging needs to become head-scratching, solution-searching.  We need to "fail fast, and fix it fast" (a quote I have used in a previous post and still cannot find the rightful owner to give credit to!).  Our teachers need to develop a growth mindset and to continually push forward into the great expanse of that-which-is-not-yet-known to seek pathways that may lead to success for our students.

We ask our students to be brave in their learning.  We need to expect it of our teachers too.