My obsession with podcasts led me to one called Akimbo by Seth Godin thanks to my friend Tracy Poelzer.
This morning while walking my dog, I listened to his podcast for the first time. This episode was about “writers block,” and it got me thinking and wondering… as educators do we experience a teacher’s block?
I pondered on the idea as I walked.
As educators, do we experience a creative block when we try to design lesson plans that look very different from the ones we were taught to make? Do we fear making changes to our ‘oldies but goodies’ because we don’t know if the needed upgrade will make them more pedagogically sound?
The truth is, we are living smack dab in the middle of an information revolution – which is both exciting and scary at the same time. Exciting because we have access to information never before seen in human history…and scary because how does this play out in our classrooms. In 2018, our classrooms don’t have to be incubators of memorization, we can create learning environments that allow kids to explore and fall in love with problem solving – but where and how do we start? How do we meet standards? What about the looming test? Enter teacher block.
When we sit down to create these amazing new classrooms do we ever experience a teacher’s block? Maybe behind this is an inner struggle with the balance of what Generation Z students need an want – and the traditional learning methods and practices we know work?
Seth argues that there is probably NO such thing as writer’s block (teacher’s block) and that what we are experiencing is more about being afraid, because we are not sure how our new ideas play out in the classroom. As I thought back to my own experiences – I remember thinking this way as I redesigned lessons and ditched the textbook. I was afraid this new design would not result in deep understanding – even though I knew the textbook and worksheets would not do that either. Even worse, I feared the scornful judgement coming from teachers sticking to their ‘tried and true’ lesson plans in the classrooms that surrounded mine. Even parents who learned through the use of multiple choice questions often raise an eye-brow to this type of more authentic and collaborative teaching because they don’t understand the amazing impact it has on learning.
Seth says the better we get at our craft – the harder it is for us to be okay with a little failure here and there – and to go back to being unsure about the outcome. Seth argues creativity doesn’t come at us like lightning all the time. We have to do the work, put in the time, and be okay without reassurance “to come up with the bad ideas on our way to having the insight to tell them apart from the good ideas.” Sadly for society, schools don’t always give us the incubator-like environment we need to do change school for the better – nor the time!!!
Then what Seth says next changed everything. He blamed our feeling of being stuck on our amygdala. That part of our brain in charge of flight or flight. Because it stops us in the face of danger, we sometimes freeze when we are not sure a lesson will work or might question whether we are using technology in the most effective ways in our lesson plans – and we go back to what we know. The more important the work is for our students the louder the amygdala will get – and thus stop you from trying a new lesson or idea. I would add that the amount of work we know is involved also causes a fight or flight response. We can either cook dinner or re-do a lesson plan and the pull in either direction is very difficult.
So we need to develop habits of living outside our comfort zone and not settling for the status quo. To do this we can try 5 minutes a day where we experiment and try something new.
Maybe let students respond on something like a Flipgrid instead of a piece of paper, or find time to create more individualized and student facing lessons using something like a Hyperdoc.
If the lesson flops, don’t worry your students will be okay. After all, I think I might be a product of massive amounts of bad lesson design, and I survived – and chances are so did you….and so will they! So go… try… take five minutes a day to change your classroom!
Seth says, “Be generous enough to show up with what you have right now” and then trust in the iteration and your students.
If you don’t know who Seth Godin is you might enjoy this Tedx Talk called Stop Stealing Dreams about our education system.