Take the Brush Out of Your Hand

I couldn’t get the tree to look right.

I was taking an art class—a painting class, to be more precise—and I couldn’t get the tree to look the way it did in the photograph. My art teacher, who may not have had the utmost faith in my art skills, hovered over me as I futzed with the branches and leaves. I expressed some frustration and asked for advice. In response, she snatched the brush out of my hand, dabbed it in the paint, and produced an exquisite tree on my canvas in no time. “That’s how you do it,” she said. “Thanks,” I muttered. I didn’t know any more about how to paint a tree than I did when I asked for help, and I was suddenly very unproud of my painting as a whole since the most difficult part wasn’t something I could claim responsibility for. How easy is it for us as teachers to take the brush away from our students and complete the painting ourselves, figuratively or literally? Seeing students struggle is hard. Wait time requires patience on our part and perseverance on theirs. Oftentimes it’s easier for us to do it ourselves, to tell them the right answer, to do the heavy lifting. We become like helicopter moms, hovering over our students and rescuing them before they have a chance to make mistakes and figure it out on their own. We have to become more comfortable at watching our students struggle. We have to become better at guiding rather than doing the work ourselves. We have to become encouragers, prompters, questioners, and coaches.

I love when my friends who are parents post videos of their babies working at taking their first steps. Watching the little ones prop themselves up, wobble and catch themselves, reach a moment of balance, and then take the first tentative and precarious step is so exciting and gives me such hope because I know that baby will soon be walking confidently, running, skipping, dancing, riding a bike, and, eventually, navigating the adult world. Along the way, parents, teachers, and other adults will offer guidance, praise, and encouragement, but ultimately the work will be done by that child. There will be times when parents will swoop in to rescue their child. That’s inevitable. But good parents know that people learn by doing, by experimenting, by troubleshooting, and by making mistakes. The college freshman whose mom did his laundry until the moment he left to live in the dorm is going to be walking around with pink socks, pink undershirts, and tighty no-longer-whities unless he finds someone willing to teach him how to wash his own clothes. In my own classroom, I have been completely guilty of metaphorically taking the paint brush away from my students and doing the work myself. I have rewritten their awkward sentences, explained what students should have been getting from something they’ve been reading, told them the “correct” theme of novels and short stories, and provided my own expert analysis of works both artistic and literary rather than letting my students write, interpret, or analyze themselves. I’ve clarified extremely vague student responses by putting words into their mouths rather than asking probing questions to help them state their answers in more complete or articulate fashion. Students in my class learned that they didn’t have to listen to each other because Mr. McKinney would eventually tell them what they needed to take away from the class discussion. Recently, I have also noticed that students have a hard time watching one another struggle. Their patience for wait time may be less than most teachers’. Their camaraderie and esprit de corps cause them to want to rescue one another. This I’ve-got-your-back mentality makes them lousy coaches. I watched some students in a class earlier this week who were supposed to be coaching one another as they attempted to place commas in some commaless sentences. One student made some pretty significant errors. His partner, rather than helping him understand or coaching him through the process, took the pencil away and repunctuated the sentences correctly. The struggling student learned nothing about how to use commas today from his partner, which was not the goal of the paired coaching experience. It’s important that we help students understand something we ourselves often struggle to understand: when you don’t do something for someone, you are doing that person a favor. In other words, it’s better to ask questions than to provide the correct answer. It’s better to let that person do it on their own than to do it for them, but it’s best if you do it alongside them. Don’t grab the pencil and work the problem yourself. Take the paintbrush out of your hand. Provide feedback. Show them how to do a similar example. Ask questions. Help them locate and work through their points of confusion. Peer coaching isn’t answer-giving. AVID students become adept at this type of peer coaching during their in-class Socratic tutorials. The idea is that the members of the tutorial group help one of their members work through a self-identified point of confusion by asking questions rather than by telling them the answer. AVID students know that we learn by doing our own thinking, not by having someone do the thinking for us. We become better at doing things by doing them, not by watching others do them. And once we learn how to do those things ourselves, we can be deservedly proud of our accomplishments. If you’ve never seen an AVID tutorial in action, I encourage you to seek one out. It’s an impressive experience. In the coaching work I do with teachers, I’m working to—as Michael Bungay Stanier says— “tame the advice monster.” It’s so easy to do the thinking for others that it becomes the default practice for many of us. What we know about learning, though, is that true learning happens when the learner does the thinking, not the teacher. I’m trying not to always have the right answer, and I want to work with students to help them understand that often it’s best not to have the right answer and instead to help someone else find the right answer. If that art teacher had let me keep the brush in my hand, if she had explained what to do, offered some suggestions, or even showed me the technique on a separate canvas, I might have liked that painting enough to keep it. Instead, she painted the tree for me. And I still don’t know how to paint one myself.  

  

Normalizing Struggle

“I’m the only one having trouble.”

“Everyone gets it except me.”

I spoke this week to a high school counselor who told me how frequently she hears comments like these from students who come to her asking to be removed from an AP or honors class. It seems that the many students who are struggling in tough classes believe no one else is experiencing difficulty.

That’s not entirely surprising. We live in a society that likes to conceal our struggles and hide our failures from the neighbors. We send holiday form letters extolling our superlative year accompanied by pictures of our perfect children, editing out the parts that include little Johnny’s battle with depression and Susie’s F in Algebra 2. On social media, we carefully curate our lives so our followers see only what we want them to know about ourselves, likely leaving out the parts that paint us in a less than flattering light. I spoke to a friend whose teenage daughter posts photos on Instagram but takes them down if they don’t receive enough “likes” because she doesn’t want others to see that she posted something that didn’t receive widespread friend approval. We grew up watching deodorant commercials urging us, “Never let them see you sweat.” Struggle, it seems, is shameful and should be hidden from others.

There’s grave danger in the classroom when we let students believe that they are alone in their struggles. Part of developing grit and a growth mindset requires an acknowledgement of difficulty and some productive conversation about how to dig yourself out of a hole or how to get past a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. We have to normalize struggle rather than hiding it like it’s a dirty little secret.

Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to acknowledge struggles to the full class: “Quite a few of you are still having difficulty with writing a thesis statement for your DBQ essay. I hope that those of you who came to tutorials this morning before school felt, as I did, that your understanding is improving. I’ll be here after school and tomorrow morning if you want some more help or if anyone else wants to stop by. If you’re having trouble at this point, that’s not totally unexpected, but I’d like to help you figure it out as soon as possible.”

A statement like that one not only shows struggling students that they are not alone but also makes it clear that seeking help during tutorials is beneficial and something other students take advantage of. An indirect invitation like this might spur a student to seek some help.

More likely, though, you’ll have to be more direct. If you know a student is experiencing difficulty, invite her privately--not embarrassingly in front of all her friends--to come in for help. Better yet, specify the time and date, and tell the student you’ll see her then. Get parents involved; I found that a solution-based parent phone call lets Mom and Dad know that you care and want to partner with them to help their son or daughter succeed. Your helpful tone of voice comes through much more clearly over the phone than it will in an e-mail.

Another option for bringing struggle to the forefront is to suspend instruction periodically to check in with everyone in a class meeting. Circle the desks or chairs up if you have room so everyone is on equal ground, and host a productive, growth-oriented class discussion about how things are going. Create a safe space for students to share what they are finding difficult and what seems to be working for them. Students love to give one another advice. Hearing other students share their confusion or difficulties lets students know they aren’t alone. When you share your own stories of encountering challenges, you break down some barriers that could exist between you and your students.

A couple of warnings are probably useful in conjunction with this.

Struggle is normal. Make sure students know that. But if every student is experiencing struggle or is not performing up to your expectations, you can’t blame the entire class. That’s when you need to examine your own instruction and your expectations. Must beginning-of-the-year students perform at an end-of-year level to earn a satisfactory grade? Have you eased students into a challenging task, gradually increasing the level of difficulty, or did you just throw them into the deep end and complain when they aren’t able to swim?

I sometimes hear teachers, when defending a widespread lack of success on an assignment, say that they are grading students on the end-of-the-year rubric but that there’s a safety net in place. In other words, lots of students are going to fail this assignment, but the teacher has a plan later on to allow them to redo and improve their mastery and, at the same time, raise the grade. I’d argue that the initial lack of success affects some students so negatively that there’s no hope for recovery. Many students facing a devastating failure will just give up; they’ll see it as an indication that they’re not capable and will shut down. Hiding the safety net until later is just plain scary. Don’t make them stand on the high dive and jump off unless they know that there’s water in the pool below and a lifeguard on duty. Maybe it’s better to let them hone their diving skills from a lower platform at first, spotting them to assist in the execution of the dive until they can do it successfully on their own.     

Let’s quit treating our struggles like some misfit locked up in a secret room in the attic in a Victorian novel. They’re not something to hide from the world; instead, we should acknowledge them, address them, push through them, and grow stronger because of them.

Revisiting Oz

Revisiting Oz:  Finding the Sweet Spot for Struggle

Years ago, I attended a late-night showing of the classic 1939 film adaptation of The Wizard of Oz at a movie theater in Austin, Texas. My most vivid memory of the experience occurred during the final minutes of the screening.

You’ve probably seen this movie, but in case you need a refresher, I’m talking about the part where Dorothy has accomplished her mission by melting the evil witch and has returned to Oz to let the wizard know that he can now send her back home to the black-and-white but considerably safer world of Kansas. When the wizard proves to be bogus and reneges on his promise, Dorothy is nearly inconsolable. Just as things seem completely hopeless, suddenly the familiar pink bubble floats down from the sky, signaling the return of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. Looking like a living blob of cotton candy, Glinda, waving her wand erratically, glides over to Dorothy, who approaches her in a state of panic.

       

“Oh, will you help me? Can you help me?” Dorothy cries breathlessly.

Glinda the Good smiles at Dorothy--as if unaware of all the poor girl has gone through since the two last chatted--and says in her sing-song voice, “You don’t need to be helped any longer. You’ve always had the power to go back to Kansas.”

To my surprise, at this point during my movie-viewing experience, the audience burst into a unified “boo,” and several people shouted out expletives directed toward Glinda.

I thought the unexpected audience reaction was hilarious. It had never occurred to me to question or judge Glinda’s assistance, but it does seem like this so-called “good” witch is a bit cavalier about the entire situation and ought to be brought up on reckless endangerment charges or at least forced to pay for Dorothy’s future therapy bills.  

Looking back at this scene today, I’m struck with several thoughts related to the work we do as students struggle in school. The extent to which we let students struggle is a tricky balancing act. In our attempts to find the sweet spot of struggle, we move between several extremes.

Scenario One:  If We Only Had a Heart

When Glinda shares with Dorothy that she possessed the power to go home all along, the scarecrow, horrified, asks her, “Why didn’t you tell her before?”

Glinda replies placidly, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.”

           

That response could be interpreted in a few ways. On one extreme, we can view Glinda as a hard-nosed stickler who was teaching Dorothy a valuable lesson. By leaving Dorothy to her own devices to walk great distances in sparkly high-heeled shoes (those didn’t look like slippers to me) and battle an evil green nemesis who tried to kill her by fire, deadly poppies, and flying monkey attack, the good witch was simply toughening Dorothy up, allowing the young girl to face the hardships of life and, hopefully, learn from them.

There are times as teachers when we move to this extreme. If you’ve ever caught yourself assigning work “because it’s good for the kids” or withholding clemency  “because they need to learn that life is tough,” then you are guilty of this.

           

The only reason for assigning work--classwork or homework--is because it’s necessary for students to master the objectives of the course. If that’s not the case, we try to justify our barbarity to ourselves by saying we are making our class more rigorous when we are actually just subjecting our students to cruelty.

           

There’s no need for teachers to teach students the lesson that life is hard. If they haven’t learned that already, life will provide plenty of opportunities for them to learn that in the future. The “life is tough” objective is not in our state standards. I looked.

Dorothy lived on a farm in Kansas during the Great Depression and didn’t have parents. I’m pretty sure she knew that life isn’t easy. She didn’t need a woman with a high pitched voice and a crown to help her learn that.

Sometimes we have to step back from our rigid ways and reclaim the heart of teaching, remembering that we’re here for the kids and should help them succeed rather than making them appreciate everywhere else that’s not school.

Scenario Two:  If We Only Had a Brain

On the other end of the spectrum, we can view Glinda as someone who made Dorothy suffer unnecessarily (and smiled about it after the fact). Our inclination is to rescue the Dorothys of the world so they don’t have to struggle.

If you’ve been teaching for more than a day, you’re well aware of the phenomenon of the helicopter parent, the one who swoops in to save their child before the child has any opportunity to struggle and problem-solve for him or herself. These rescue attempts come from a good place: the heart. Parents love and care for their kids and want to give them all the support they’re able to provide.  

Sometimes, we are guilty of same thing as teachers.

When we enter helicopter teacher mode, we look at our students as poor, fragile souls who deserve pity and constant rescue. We coddle and give thousands of second chances (which are actually third, fourth, fifth chances, etc.). We hesitate to ask students to step outside their comfort zones and try things on their own because we are concerned about how they might react if they are not successful. Again, all of this comes from that good place; we have the heart to make each student feel safe in a world that often seems dangerous and daunting.  

If we step back for a second and use our brains, however, we see that this rescue mentality stunts growth in whatever areas we are assisting students. By saving students when they forget something, we hinder the development of responsibility. Solving problems for them prevents young people from growing the capacity to problem-solve on their own. And shielding students from opportunities to speak publicly, answer questions aloud, and wrestle with a difficult intellectual task keeps them at their current level of competence perpetually.

Scenario Three: If We Have the Courage

While I think Glinda the Good Witch was a little too hands-off in her approach to Dorothy’s lesson-learning, Dorothy did learn some good skills during her journey. Was Dorothy’s assistance-free struggle worth it? Or should Glinda have just sent the poor girl home from the outset of the story and saved her from the difficulty? The sweet spot for struggle lies somewhere between the two extremes.

In our classrooms, the best thing we can do is allow students to struggle with a safety net and visible assistance at the ready when students falter. We have to have the courage to let go of our tendencies--whether it’s to teach a harsh life lesson or to circle the helicopters for rescue before a struggle occurs--and become what Jessica Lahey, author of The Gift of Failure, calls “autonomy-supportive” educators.

In her book, Lahey is writing on the subject of parenting, but what she says still has relevance for our lives in the classroom. When we support our students’ autonomy, we develop a true growth mindset for ourselves and for those we teach. Lahey offers some parenting tips that translate well into teacher practices:

• Encourage from the sidelines.
• Praise students for their effort, not for their inherent qualities.
• Make sure your students know you like them, regardless of their success or failure.
• Allow for mistakes but guide students to learn from them.  
• Value mistakes as much as successes.
• Support students’ feelings of frustration and disappointment.
• Allow students a chance to struggle with a problem before you provide solutions or answers. Talk with them about how they’re solving the problem and guide them to find a solution through questioning.  
• Don’t offer extrinsic motivators in exchange for behaviors.
• Don’t overwhelm students with unsolicited advice and direction (we see it as “helping;” they see it as nagging).
• Give feedback--and give it in the moment when students need it.

I’ll return to the topic of feedback in a future blog because I think it’s such a vital part of what we do as educators.

Providing thoughtful assistance at the moment when students need it is the best way to guide them to success. If Glinda had loaded Dorothy with tons of advice on the start of her journey, that advice would likely have fallen on unreceptive ears since Dorothy--like many teens--wouldn’t have viewed the advice as meaningful at the time. On the other hand, if Glinda had waited until the end to point out everything Dorothy did wrong (like we do when we offer exhaustive feedback on a paper after the grade is in the gradebook and the student can do nothing about it), she would deserve to be booed by audiences. If only Glinda had popped in for a coaching conference with Dorothy at several stages along the journey, the young girl would have felt more confident, could have developed a more thoughtful strategy for success, and probably wouldn’t have done so much shrieking and crying.  

It takes an act of courage for us to let go of our long-entrenched practices to do what research tells us is best for our students. Finding that sweet spot for struggle isn’t easy. For many, becoming autonomy-supportive will require that courage, as well as some heart work and some brain work.