Choose Hard

Is learning in your classroom hard? Do kids struggle to figure things out? Do you step back and allow them the breathing room to get to that point where internal frustration pushes their minds to find the solution and they reach a goal they never even realized they could?  I hope so.   It can be hard to do this. To support and guide, without relieving all of their struggle.  It’s not the way I was trained in college.  Somewhere along the teaching road, there became this false sense that making learning easy, fast, and right in front of kids was the way to ‘student achievement.’ Some jaded idea that doing this, a lot, is what ‘rigor’ is about.  Somewhere along the teaching road, I discovered something else.  Easy stuff? It’s not about learning.  The hard stuff? The stuff where you dig deep, think, collaborate and build each other’s thoughts, and continue to push yourself to places you have never been mentally.  Stretching. Growing.  Thinking deep, in new ways, often.. that’s ‘rigor’ to me now.  And that’s where learning really is. Real learning.