The Master Teacher Blog

It may seem odd to consider giving oneself gifts in the final weeks of the school year. Our attention has been focusing on others and making certain we complete crucial tasks, making sure students stay focused, while ensuring important recognitions and awards get presented with appropriate fanfare. We typically think of this time as busy, stressful, pressure-packed, and, occasionally, chaotic.

Certainly, our students deserve the attention and recognition we’ll provide, but we also need to attend to our mental and physical health during these weeks. As we think about what lies ahead, we do well to also consider what we need and how we’ll take care of ourselves. With this challenge in mind, here are five gifts to give ourselves to sustain our energy and carry us through to the end.

The first gift is time. We may not think that it’s realistic to set aside time to catch our breath, clear our minds, and restore our spirit. Yet, taking a relaxing walk, listening to our favorite music, or just visiting with friends can go a long way toward helping us power through looming activities and responsibilities.

The second gift is simplicity. The end of the year can be complicated. Programs and celebrations need planned, significant portions of the curriculum have yet to be engaged, and much documentation and report completion lie ahead. Now’s a good time to ask ourselves what really matters, what can be simplified, and what can be let go. Focusing on what’s essential helps us preserve energy and allows us to enjoy the experience of concluding our teaching and learning journey with students.

The third gift is forgiveness. Not everything has gone perfectly this year, and not everything will go perfectly during the final weeks. Still, much good has been accomplished over the past weeks and months. We shouldn’t allow what we wish would’ve happened to cloud and crowd out what’s been good. Similarly, much that’s good lies ahead, even if what we’ve planned and what we’ll do won’t go exactly according to our script. Unfortunately, too much focus on what’s not perfect can rob us of what’s been so good and has given our students so much.

The fourth gift is kudos. Now’s a good time to reflect on the difference we’ve made in the lives of our students. We’ve been a driving force for learning, growth, and maturity in their lives. We may hear expressions of appreciation from students and families. We may receive congratulatory comments from colleagues and supervisors. However, we know about differences we’ve made of which no one else is aware. We can recall special moments when our counsel, encouragement, and coaching made a crucial difference during a time of struggle and challenge for our students. We can celebrate even if we can’t share some of these experiences with others.

The fifth and final gift is joy. We can let go of the responsibility we felt as we launched our students on their learning journey, the weight we felt when they struggled, and the commitment we made to keep trying, even when we felt as though we were running out of ideas to support them. As the year ends, we can release the load we carried, experience the joy of having completed our task, and ready our students for the next phase of their learning journey.

This is a time of mixed emotions, competing responsibilities, and significant stress. Consequently, it’s also a time when taking care of ourselves is especially important. Enjoy these five gifts and make this an end to the year that you’ll celebrate and remember.

Occasionally, we face the challenge of a difficult meeting with a volatile parent, a parent who has a history of struggling to control their emotions, especially when their reactions can be explosive and threatening. We may have some negative news to share about their child that includes significant consequences, and we need the parent to understand the full scope of the situation. We may need to ask for the parent’s cooperation and support for a difficult decision. We may need to caution the parent to not reach a premature conclusion or allow the bad news to lead to physical abuse of their child. Regardless, these situations call for face-to-face interaction despite our anxiety.

Meetings with parents who may become volatile require special planning and precautions to increase the likelihood that the purpose of the meeting can be accomplished without the situation becoming unmanageable. We also need to be prepared should the situation escalate, and we need to take steps to protect ourselves. Here are seven elements and actions to consider when a meeting with a volatile parent is in your future

First, carefully choose the location of the meeting. Meet with the parent on the school campus, if possible. Choose a space with visibility, such as windows or glass walls. The space should be near a public area, if possible. Visibility can serve as a deterrent to having the situation spin out of control and provide access to assistance, if necessary. Avoid meeting in a windowless office or remote room.

Second, arrange for someone to attend the meeting with you as an observer. The observer might be another staff member, but an administrator or supervisor often is preferable. Explain the observer’s role to the parent, as a listener and “second set of ears” to be certain that everyone’s questions are answered, and all concerns are addressed. The presence of a third person can reduce the potential for threats and other out-of-control behavior and can be an additional option to summon assistance, if needed.

Third, set ground rules at the beginning of the meeting. Before beginning, restate the purpose of the meeting. Consider expectations, such as committing to listening, showing respect, focusing on the needs of the student, and remaining focused on the problem. Seek agreement on the ground rules, but don’t press if agreement isn’t immediately forthcoming. Often, it’s enough to have stated your expectations.

Fourth, consider taking notes as the meeting unfolds. Recording what’s agreed to, noting questions, and documenting areas for follow-up signals that you’re listening and taking the conversation seriously. Also, taking notes can help manage the pace of the meeting. Stopping to make a note allows for reflection and allows tempers to cool. Of course, meeting notes can be helpful if the situation deteriorates and there becomes a need for legal involvement.

Fifth, remain calm, factual, and focused. Listen carefully and respectfully to what the parent says. You may discover hints and clues in the parent’s words that can help you navigate emotions and reach a satisfactory conclusion. Avoid getting caught in an argument. An argument can be a shortcut to an emotional eruption.

Sixth, if the conversation becomes heated, remind everyone of the purpose of the meeting and the importance of finding solutions. Keep your emotions in check. Share your concern that emotions may get in the way of what’s best for the student. You might consider suspending the conversation briefly to allow emotions to settle and refocus attention.

Seventh, if you hear a threat or feel threatened terminate the meeting. Ask the parent to leave. If the parent refuses, you and the observer should immediately leave the room. Report the incident to the principal or appropriate central office staff member. If it appears the threat may extend beyond the meeting, the administration may consider involving legal counsel to take appropriate steps.

Meeting with volatile parents is never a pleasant prospect. However, these meetings often are necessary to address difficult situations. Choosing to avoid these meetings can make the situation worse and undermine our efforts to serve the needs of the student. Our best choice is to plan carefully, prepare fully, and engage thoughtfully. We might be surprised by how well the meeting goes.

The end of the school year offers a final opportunity to communicate with parents and reflect on the past year. It can also be a great time to provide parents with recommendations and advice to help their children retain what they’ve learned and prepare for learning that lies ahead next year.

We might begin our end-of-year communication - whether in a formal letter, email, video, or by other means - by sharing our gratitude with parents for sharing their children with us for the past year. Children are the center of parents' lives, and their trust in and support for us is a crucial contributor to learning success. Our message can reinforce the importance of this relationship and encourage parents to make a similar investment in teachers with whom their children will learn in the future. Our communication also might include a brief recounting of the year’s highlights and shared special experiences. Reflecting on the year can be a good way to bring closure and remind parents of the important role they play in their children’s learning.

Our observation about the important role parents play in learning can serve as a transition to reminding parents of the crucial role they’ll play in retention of their children’s learning during the summer months. For example, we might share with parents that without ongoing stimulation and reinforcement of learning, students can lose a full month or more of school year learning over the summer. Consequently, students may enter school in the fall with their learning having fallen back from where it was in the spring and necessitate time consuming reteaching and stressful catch-up. Spread over multiple summers, lost learning can accumulate to as much as a full year.

Of course, we need to share formal summer learning opportunities offered by the school or in the community that parents can access for their children. These opportunities can serve as valuable counter forces to learning loss. However, there are many other opportunities of which parents can take advantage beyond or, in some cases, in place of formal summer learning experiences. Here are four strategies we can share with parents to counter summer learning loss and help their children be prepared when school resumes in the fall.

First, parents can look for everyday opportunities to make connections and discuss applications of learning. Not all summer learning must be planned and formal. Parents can seek out connections in everyday experiences. Routine events can offer rich opportunities for children and young people to apply concepts and skills they’ve learned during the year. Common tasks and projects can provide opportunities to apply math skills or observe scientific phenomenon. News events can be starting places to make geographic connections and explore historical contexts.

Second, parents can make it a practice to read to, read with, and read to share with their children. For young children, listening to someone read can increase vocabulary, stimulate imagination, and build motivation to become a reader. For older children and even adolescents, reading aloud or listening to recorded reading can keep reading skills sharp and provide enjoyable shared family experiences. For example, on long car trips consider having one person read as others listen and then discuss what was read. Also, parents might consider having each family member select something they’d like to read and then have family members share what they’re reading, how they’re reacting, and what they’re learning.

Third, parents might seek out fun events that also offer learning opportunities. Visits to museums, libraries, historical sites and exhibits, attendance at cultural events, and even nature and neighborhood hikes can offer valuable opportunities to reinforce and extend learning. During and after the experiences, parents can help children and young people to place the experience in context and make connections. Equally important, parents need to pay attention to questions their children ask and take time to explore implications and reinforce aspects of significance.

Fourth, parents can use summer opportunities to preview key skills and concepts students will learn in the coming year. Our communication might preview highlights of the next year’s curriculum to help parents become aware of what lies ahead. We can offer ideas and examples of how parents can expose students to key concepts and skills. The idea isn’t to have parents pre-teach, rather they can look for opportunities to expose students to and discuss what they’ll be learning. We know the more background knowledge students bring to new learning, the easier and more successful learning becomes.

Certainly, as we reflect on a sincere end-of-year message to share with parents, we understand parents want their children to have a relaxing, fun-filled summer, especially in the aftermath of the past three years. Fortunately, summer learning doesn’t necessarily have to be time-consuming or drudging work. When combined with family activities and shared experiences, summer learning can be a great antidote for learning loss - and it can be fun.

We serve in institutions with the mission of nurturing learning. On the surface, this statement seems obvious. Yet, when we examine the focus, practices, incentives, and culture present in most schools, this relationship isn’t always clear. For example, when asking what’s most important to achieve in school, students are likely to respond with “getting good grades.” Such a response isn’t surprising when we consider the messages students so often hear from adults. We tell them, “Study hard to get good grades.” We should advise them to “study so they learn well.” Grades should serve as a reflection of learning, not the purpose for it.

We might think this is a distinction without a difference until we examine its implications. In fact, when grades become the relied-upon driver for student attention and effort, learning too often takes a “back seat.” Learning becomes a servant of grades rather than grades reflecting learning. When this happens, we and our students risk becoming victims of several unfortunate outcomes. As examples:

Earning points becomes more important than finding purpose. Students can become distracted by how to increase their grades and can lose sight of the importance of and reasons why they're learning.

Performance gets valued over progress. When grades symbolize status and accomplishment, it’s easy for students to want to look good and appear smart over engaging in struggle while developing knowledge and skills.

Cheating can become a strategy. If the point is to get a good grade, finding a short cut can seem like a rational consideration.

Learning is seen as a means rather than an end. In life, learning is the differentiator. Grades that aren’t supported by learning are artificial and useless in the “real world.”

Learning recall is compromised. When learning is driven by grades, once the grade is assigned students typically forget much of what they’ve learned, as their brains believe the purpose for learning has been served.

Grades can mislead. People who attempt to understand what students know can be deceived by the grades students received.

Of course, the position grades occupy in the culture of most schools may seem unassailable. While we may not be able to immediately change the system, there are steps we can take to counter the pressure and influence of grades that can compromise learning. Here are four actions to get started.

Focus on purpose as students are introduced to and engage with new learning. We may not always think deeply about why students should learn what we’re asking. Yet, we know that in life, purpose is the strongest driver of learning. Not everything we ask students to learn has immediate life application, but our students can still benefit from our reflection. Here are some questions we might ask: Why’s this learning important? How might it improve students’ lives? How might they use what they’re learning beyond the confines of the classroom? Of course, achieving a goal to gain competency in a skill can be a purpose. Meeting a challenge can be worth putting in the effort, especially when working with others. Providing service and support to others while learning together can also be a reason to build one’s skills and knowledge.

Focus on the learning process over the product, especially early in the teaching and learning cycle. For example, we might focus instruction and coaching on key strategies for learning, on effective ways to invest learning effort, and on connecting students with key resources to support their learning. Our coaching might focus on where students struggle, on what insights they’re gaining, on what they see as next steps, etc. Meanwhile, we should also consider delaying the assignment of grades for as long as possible. Multiple studies have shown that when grades are assigned, students devalue feedback and focus on the grade. Grades focus on the product and can overwhelm attention to the process.

De-emphasize grades as the reason for learning. Learning builds competence and confidence. Learning creates capacity, options, and power, while grades provide limited value if not supported by real learning.

Remind students that grades have a limited “shelf life,” while learning holds its value. Some students and parents argue that good grades are crucial to get into the post-secondary school of their choice. While in many cases this may be true, it’s good learning that allows students to stay there once they’ve been admitted. Meanwhile, learning leads to good grades, so preoccupation with grades as the goal isn’t necessary.

Admittedly, grades have come to occupy an outsized place in schools and in the learning lives of students. But, they can be a significant distraction from rich, lasting learning. We may not be able to fully dispel the perception of their importance in learning, but we can coach our students to gain a better understanding of and better perspective on how the narrow pursuit of grades can be an empty promise and “fool’s gold” in their pursuit of life meaning and success.

This is the time of year when we face the challenge of preparing our students for upcoming assessments and exams. Students have been exposed to a wealth of content, concepts, and skills over the past weeks and months. We know that students often forget much of what they’ve heard and taken in over time. Now we need to understand how well they’ve absorbed, stored, and can recall and apply what they’ve learned. Our challenge is to bring what students have learned to a conscious level and shore up what they still need to learn. Test preparation strategies that refresh learning and extend recall can help students do this.

However, our goal shouldn’t simply be just to have our students do well on an exam. While having our students do well is part of their and our success equation, we really want them to be able to recall, apply, and connect what they’ve learned beyond the exam. Test preparation may be the immediate activity, but it’s a great opportunity to help students to refresh, reinforce, and ramp up what they’ve learned. Our real goal is to have students be able to retrieve what they’ve learned and access it long after they’ve finished the exam and left our class.

Giving students practice questions that mimic the format they’ll encounter on the exam and reviewing strategies for developing and choosing question responses can assist students to accurately demonstrate what they know. However, these activities do little to reinvigorate what students have learned or uncover gaps and “soft spots” in their learning. Interestingly, some of the strategies we used during initial instruction to help students remember can also be useful in refreshing and reinforcing past learning. Here are four strategies that can help our students get ready for major exams while also extending their learning recall.

Schedule brief, frequent, and focused refreshment sessions. Start early and allow plenty of time. For example, we might take the first or last few minutes of daily class routines for quick review and assessment of what students know and what may need to be reinforced. Students will be better able to re-activate prior learning if they engage in small doses of review over time, rather than large dose cramming in the final days before the assessment. These sessions should include concepts and skills with which students did well during initial instruction and areas of struggle. Just because students scored well on previous assessments doesn't mean they can recall and apply previous learning now. In areas where students struggled during initial learning, we need to pay particular attention to aspects and elements that challenged them. We can also challenge ourselves to find new approaches that might sidestep learning traps and trip-ups and create more successful learning paths for students.

Have students engage in retrieval practice. This relatively simple research-based strategy can provide a significant advantage to students’ preparation. We start by giving students a specific topic, process, or skill on which to focus. Students then do a “mind dump” by recounting, orally or in writing, everything they can recall from prior learning related to the recall target. Students can quickly refresh their memories while identifying areas that may need reinforcement. Interestingly, this approach has been shown to be more efficient and effective than reteaching. Of course, we can encourage students to repeat this process on their own as they prepare for exams individually or in small groups. A key benefit associated with this activity is its ability to extend recall well beyond the completion of an exam.

Coach students to engage in self-quizzing. We might encourage students to generate questions they anticipate will be on the exam. We might “prime” this activity by reminding students of the major concepts and skills they’ve studied and likely will be included in the assessment. By developing questions, students will focus on key content they need to know. Their answers to the questions they generate can build confidence and uncover areas needing more focus and study. A twist to this activity is to have students exchange questions and have classmates develop responses for review by the question creator. The exchange likely will broaden the thinking and preparation in which students engage, as different students predictably will focus on different aspects of the content.

Have students build “mind maps” to demonstrate elements, relationships, and key concept hierarchies. Mind maps can be particularly helpful to students who prefer to organize their thinking and recall with visual representations. Seeing the map in their minds can be a great assistance to them as they respond to exam questions, and "mind maps" retain easily long after the exam is complete. If students build "mind maps" during initial learning, now is a good time to have students retrieve them, review them, and explain their meaning to a classmate. The process of explaining will further solidify recall and may surface areas of confusion or memory loss that’ll need to be addressed.

Obviously, we want our students to do well on key unit and end-of-year assessments. However, we also know students often focus their attention on upcoming exams and quickly forget content once the assessment is complete. These strategies can help students learn more effectively now, as well as build long-term memory they can access in the future.

Over the years researchers have documented a long and growing list of what often are called “best practices” in instruction and learning activities. The goal has been to sort and sift what educators typically do to stimulate learning and determine which practices generate the most learning. For example, researcher John Hattie has compiled an extensive list of practices that have been evaluated for learning effect or impact using meta-analysis. Robert Marzano and others have developed similar lists from which educators can select and apply in their work with students.

While these lists and accompanying research can be helpful, not all “best practices” work in every circumstance and with every student. In fact, so called “best practices” can fall short in their impact when misapplied. Some practices are more appropriate for younger students. Other practices work best with highly motivated students. Still others may be appropriate for introducing content or honing key skills. Some practices also may rely on adequate background knowledge and skill levels for students to find success. Other practices depend on high levels of teacher experience and expertise.

The fact is that “best practices” aren’t necessarily effective practices unless they match the learning readiness of students, are consistent with and build on previous and planned instruction, can be facilitated with our level of knowledge and skill, as well as tie into other related factors. Best practices become effective practices only when they’re thoughtfully applied in ways and under circumstances that match their design. Unless we understand the context, connections, and current capacity of learners, we can’t have confidence in the effectiveness or appropriateness of a given practice or strategy.

When considering what instructional and learning support strategies to employ, there are several questions we can ask ourselves to ensure that “best practice” will be effective practice with our students:

What's the goal of our instruction? Any decision regarding instructional and learning support activities must start with a clear goal. We need to consider whether the strategy or practice we’re considering matches and supports our intentions.

What role will students play in this activity? Some practices and activities require students to be actively engaged while others depend on students listening to and absorbing information. Obviously, the age, maturity, and personalities of our students need to play a role in the choices we make.

How impactful is this practice likely to be with my students? We can consult available research to gain a general understanding of how well the practice we’re considering is likely to generate significant learning. Of course, we also need to consider what we know about our students and how they’ve responded to similar activities in the past.

Do our students possess necessary background knowledge to be successful? Strategies that may be highly successful with students who are experienced with the content and possess background experience may not be as impactful with students who lack the context and knowledge necessary to engage successfully in the activity.

How will this instruction or learning activity fit with and build on previous instruction? An instructional and learning support activity may sound interesting, exciting, and engaging, but it won’t fit well with the learning paths on which our students are traveling. It may be that we need to delay implementation until our students are ready, or we may need to modify the activity to fit the context where we want to use it.

Do students possess the skills to engage productively in the learning? Some best practices require students to work independently, manage their time and focus, and employ specific techniques and tools to be successful. When presented with learning expectations that surpass our students’ current capacity, they’re likely to struggle and may fail. We may need to delay the activity or take the time necessary to build student skills before moving forward.

What level of interest or commitment will students have in the activity? The better we know our students, the better able we’ll be to answer this question. In some cases, students will naturally be drawn to the learning and content we consider. At other times, we may need to build curiosity and establish a compelling purpose before introducing the activity. The bottom line is that if students fail to see purpose, value, or aren’t interested, the impact of an otherwise “best practice” will likely fall short.

We have available to us a wide array of instructional practices and learning support activities. Our challenge is to match their application with what’s most likely to be effective considering what we know about our students, what we know about the concept or skill, and the timing and context within which the activity will be introduced.

Saying that attitudes are contagious may sound trite, but we don’t have to look far to see evidence of their power. We hear comments like, “She lights up a room.” “I feel better just being around her.” “He brings out my best self.” “Her ‘can do’ approach makes me want to try harder.”

We’ve all had experiences in which we’ve made similar observations. These are examples of evidence that attitudes are, in fact, contagious. How we feel, how we relate, and how we communicate can have a powerful effect on those with whom we interact.

The potential for attitudes to influence is a source of power we can tap in our work with students, colleagues, and others. However, we need to be authentic in our emotions, open in our approach, and generous in sharing our attitudes.

It’s also true that the influence of our attitudes can be positive or negative. They can pull people down or lift them up. The choice is ours. Of course, we tend to accomplish more by creating hope and sharing possibilities than by spreading fear and sowing doubt. Let’s explore five attitudes worth spreading regardless of the context or our role.

First is optimism. Optimism injects energy and draws attention to possibilities and opportunities. Optimistic people see the future as inviting, filled with choices, and bursting with potential. While not everyone necessarily will share unbounded optimism, being around an optimistic person tempts us to see the “upside” of situations and consider the good things we might experience.

The second contagious attitude is curiosity. Curiosity leads us to explore and keeps us at the leading edge of learning. Curiosity might be thought of as a virtual radar to notice and explore what’s happening around us. Being around someone who asks interesting and smart questions can quickly build an urge to wonder and explore.

Third is confidence. Responsible, grounded confidence grows out of experience and a belief in our skills. It relies on the understanding that we have the capacity to meet and overcome challenges with good strategy, through smart effort, and by drawing on resources around us. Confidence provides the reassurance necessary to take responsible risks. Confidence spreads when we believe in the worth, talents, and potential of those around us.

The fourth attitude worth spreading is empathy. Empathy involves our listening, responding, and seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. Empathy is a search to understand and an effort to build a connection. Genuinely caring for someone is an act of respect. Empathy lifts rather than pities the condition of another. Experiencing empathy can lead to a desire to show the same respect and care for someone else.

Fifth is gratitude. Gratitude is an appreciation for what’s good, even when things are bad. We can feel grateful in the context of tragedy or triumph. Acting on feelings of gratitude can lead to greater patience, decreased depression, increased wisdom, and higher levels of generosity, patience, and perseverance. Gratitude focuses our attention and emotions on others rather than being self-centered. Gratitude can lead us to move past quick, superficial expressions of thanks to pause and feel the emotion of the moment. Being in the presence of someone who practices gratitude is comfortable and refreshing and often stimulates a wish to nurture the same feelings in others.

Of course, these five attitudes aren’t the only attitudes that are contagious. However, sharing and spreading these attitudes will not only make us and others feel better, but they can also make us more successful.

There are times when we find ourselves searching for energy and scrounging for motivation to power through work struggles. We might put off the task and hope for inspiration, or we might give minimal effort and wait for urgency and pressure to motivate us. Neither approach is likely to be productive and satisfying.

Sometimes we need a shift in our thinking, a technique to tap our motivation, or a way to draw on an area of strength. We need a new perspective and approach to get on track and avoid worker burn-out or depression. Fortunately, there are strategies to improve our outlook, increase our confidence, and accelerate our learning and skill growth. Consider these four strategies:

Strategy:

A great place to start is focusing less on what we must do and reminding ourselves of why we’re doing it. To do lists can be intimidating and “must do’s” can feel like drudgery, thus making procrastinating a reasonable option. But if we shift our thinking from what we must do to why we’re doing it, it can make a big difference. Our list of tasks becomes more meaningful, and doing the work results in greater value and satisfaction.

In practice:

Correcting a set of essays may feel like time consuming toil. Yet, if we shift our mindset and consider the work as exploring the thinking, imagination, and creativity of our students and providing insightful and helpful feedback, grading presents new meaning and becomes more worthwhile. Similarly, we might think of lesson planning as merely an item to check of our to-do list. Or we can view our planning as designing engaging and productive learning experiences for our students that’ll ignite their energy while building excitement. Simple thought shifts can go a long way to improve our mood, as well as unleash our own renewed energy.

Strategy:

We can leverage our current strengths to support the development of new learning and skills. Learning new instructional practices, trying new approaches, and developing new strategies can be difficult and humbling work. Inevitably, early attempts will prove less than successful, leading to frustration by the slow pace of progress. Yet, if we pair what we’re learning with a current area of strength and expertise, we’ll shore up our confidence and accelerate our progress.

In practice:

Strength lies in organizing our content to make it understandable. Our goal seeks to enhance our impact and improve student learning recall by introducing new content through memorable and compelling stories. We achieve this through organizing and sequencing what students need to learn within the structure of good storytelling. While our stories may seem lame at first, the content we share becomes more memorable and impactful through story telling. Over time, our storytelling skills grow. Our organizational skills lead students to understand what they’re asked to learn, and our stories help with student recall long after we move on to other content and skills.

Strategy:

By embracing “going forward together”, we choose to move beyond “going it alone” when we face difficult challenges and when we need new ideas. Generating new approaches and developing strategies to engage our students can become a daunting challenge, especially if we try to do it alone. Even if we work with a partner or team, we can fall into habits and patterns that limit new thinking and new idea exploration. We may need to expand our network of resources and our exposure to others in our profession.

In practice:

Social media, virtual networks, and other ways of accessing professionals beyond our physical presence open new possibilities and provide rich and varied resources to expand our thinking and improve our practice. Sometimes admitting that we feel stuck and need new thinking can mean uncomfortable conversations and awkward admissions with close colleagues. Yet, reaching out to others virtually and seeking ideas can feel much safer and less uncomfortable. Meanwhile, we gain a new appreciation of our ideas, skills, and practices as we share our experiences with them and provide support to their work, as well.

Strategy:

We can have a vision for where we want to take our learning and practice, but building momentum and positioning for success are easier when we focus our attention and energy on the next step or steps. Learning journeys can easily overwhelm and discourage us when we try to grasp the entire picture and all that it might entail. We can falsely assume that once we begin something new, we should be immediately proficient. Yet, when we try something significant and new, just like our students, we're likely to make mistakes and experience setbacks. And as we do with our students, we must provide ourselves encouragement not to give up.

In practice:

It helps to shift our practice by becoming less instruction driven and more learner centered. We might start by giving students more opportunities for choice in their learning, as a first step. We maintain other elements of our current practice until we build routines. Students then develop the skills and processes necessary to take more responsibility for their learning. If we focus on the next steps we need to take, we grasp what we want to change, adjust strategy, and mark progress to prepare for more significant changes. We celebrate our wins even when our long-term goal seems far off. As the saying goes, “The greatest journey begins with a single step.”

Sometimes it’s not the work struggle that’s the problem, but our mindset toward it. At other times we need to draw on our talents and strengths to carry us through as we develop new skills and engage in new learning. Meanwhile, if we draw on the knowledge, expertise, and creativity of others, the options and possibilities available to us grow. Finally, when we focus on what we need to do next and refuse to become preoccupied and overwhelmed by the size and complexity of what we face, we move forward with clarity and confidence.

This is a time of the year when students often encounter multiple learning challenges. Past experiences, assumptions about their capabilities, and beliefs about their learning can hinder their academic success. As a result, they may stumble and struggle to stay focused and move forward.

Of course, we need to ensure students have access to instruction and other learning resources necessary to ensure their success. However, students can be held back by patterns of thinking and assumptions about how learning occurs and can be unaware of what power they possess to overcome some of the most common learning challenges. Fortunately, our timely and strategic coaching can help students find their way through to success. Let’s explore six of the most common thinking traps and how we can coach students to escape them.

The first thinking trap is availability of time. Students can become trapped into thinking they’ve no time for anything else because of their full schedules. They fail to see they've a choice regarding what they do with their time. They don’t have more or less time than anyone on earth. Everyone has a 24-hour day each day throughout the year. They must thoughtfully choose how to fill their schedules to increase their chances for success. Success in a changing world requires them to prioritize what they need to do and learn. They can free up time, but they can’t create more of it.

The second trap is feeling overwhelmed. When students feel overwhelmed, they’re often preoccupied with the volume of work, size, and complexity of the challenges they face. The result too often is they become paralyzed. A key counter strategy is to help students focus on where they are and what initial steps they can take. Often the metaphor of a journey can be useful. While a journey may be long and has an ultimate destination, it begins with a single step. There’ll be opportunities to adjust, arrive at decisions, and mark progress along the way, but success begins with that first step. Further, each step taken often reveals the next step to take.

A third thinking trap is experiencing failure. Students often feel as though failure reflects who they are, not actions they’ve taken. They may see a failed attempt as evidence of a lack of intelligence or talent. The trap is seeing failure as a permanent condition, not as a temporary state, relevant only until subsequent action moves them forward. A key strategy in the face of failure is to focus on what can be learned. Learning gives value to the experience and can prepare students to move forward and become successful. Failure is nothing more than evidence that there’s more to be learned and an invitation to try again.

A fourth thinking trap is feeling stuck, leading to the inability to see a solution or path forward. Students can feel as though they’re “spinning their wheels” and not making progress regardless of the effort they’re giving. Here, the key strategy is to think of being stuck as actually a threshold for learning something new. Feeling stuck likely means the student has exhausted the strategies they know and now are ready to learn more. In some cases, becoming unstuck can be as simple as reframing the challenge to help them view the situation from another perspective. At other times, an effective counter is to coach students to step back and consider what strategies they’ve tried, what other strategies might be employed, what effort they’ve given, how they might adjust their approach, what resources they’ve tapped, and what additional resources they might consider.

A fifth thinking trap is that productivity is a function of time given to a task. In fact, focus and the presence of supportive conditions can be more determinative than the number of minutes or hours students invest in studying or completing a project. The coaching strategy is to help students understand that removing distractions, such as social media, technology unrelated to the task at hand, and other competitors for their attention often contributes more to their productivity than the actual time they spend. As a strategy, short “learning sprints” featuring intense focus and effort followed by brief breaks for reflection and relaxation commonly result in more learning than long periods of study plagued by distractions and a wandering focus.

A sixth thinking trap is that creativity is best generated by focusing on a task, problem, or challenge, and pressing for ideas. Too often, pressing in a direction or pursuing a single focus gets in the way of creativity. Unlike productivity that rewards concentration, creativity often thrives with task-switching, attention shifting, and exploring a variety of approaches. We might coach students to step back and explore, engage in other tasks, and allow their thinking to wander. As they do, their minds are freer to make connections, see possibilities. and generate ideas that’ll feed their creativity.

Our knowledge of and experience with our students at this time of the year can position us to predict many of the thinking traps they'll encounter. Our anticipation, reassurance, and coaching can help students avoid many of the most common and distressing thinking traps. Of course, avoiding these thinking traps is preferable and more productive than having students try to extricate themselves once they’re caught.