Let’s do something difficult!

I would like to thank Frank Havemann for his experiences on the difficulties, challenges and joys of taking on a challenge.  Frank encapsulates the importance of continuing to learn and how it helps us to develop as teachers and people. 

Let’s do something difficult! By Frank Havemann

One of the bits of advice that really stuck with me from my not-so-distant PGCE was the suggestion to try something genuinely challenging every once in a while. “Thank you very much”, you might respond, “my Year 10 are challenging enough on a warm Friday afternoon.”

Fair enough. What I really mean is attempting to learn something you find difficult, to empathise with the sheer frustration of “not getting it”, of the struggle with learning that some of our students encounter in our lessons. What does that mean in practice? Here are a few examples that have taken me out of my comfort zone over the last year and a bit.

Learning a new instrument:

I have always wanted to play the drums, so I finally started practicing. And it’s frustrating, because my ears are trained well enough to tell me how off-beat I really am. I want results immediately, and I want to play the exciting stuff, but instead it’s just lots of patient practice to get better slowly.

Planning a maths masterclass:

Planning and resourcing are my teaching nemeses, so taking on extra planning for a group of 40 G&T kids for a 3 hour session made me very nervous. Instead the process forced me to confront my process head-on, and to push through some of the blocks I had set myself. It was a lot of work, but it felt good to accomplish something genuinely challenging.

Learning a new subject:

I took a class in economics at university, and though interesting, it didn’t really make sense to me. Recently, the imminent collapse of western civilization(hyperbole alert!) suggested it might matter after all, so I started studying from the beginning, just to find out what parts of whose claim were nonsense, wrong, inflammatory or otherwise misguided. I’m still working on that one. It turns out some of the materials on economics are drier than, well, let’s just say they are quite dry. But I am trying to stick to it, and do a bit of revision (as it were) every week.  

So what have I learned ?

My students aren’t the only ones who want results immediately.

It is difficult to read something that is technical, even if you are interested.

It is really difficult to motivate yourself to do something if you are not interested.

None of these are surprising, but all of them feel quite different when you experience them for yourself. It is good to be reminded how it feels to struggle to

learn something.

Do you have examples of things you tried and struggled with? How has it helped your teaching?