too much too fast

You might be able to guess what this piece will be about. You may have seen it with your own eyes or just heard about it. You may have fallen prey to it growing up. You may see it in your children, your students, a kid having a tantrum on the street after school.

School is hard. And it’s gotten harder.

I’ve seen kids, beautiful, bright eyed, bushy tailed kids cry over not being able to write. It felt like I was asking for a novel to be written. It was too much. They were too young. They needed things to go slower. They needed more time to adjust to the changing world. So much ipad/tv time at home and then non-stop academics and mean non-stop at school.

I’m not saying we need tv time or more technology at school. On the contrary, I used as little as possible in the classroom. Even my movement breaks for the kids were rarely from a website on the smart board-until the end of the year ;)

The kids need adjustment to the high expectations. Some never fully get the chance to and they fall behind. And they cry when trying to complete assignments that are too hard for them. Some kids can get the swing of things faster than others. But that shouldn’t be the standard, they are fantastic but often advanced. Then we are praising kids for being able to sprint ahead of everyone.

But the sprinting ahead should not be the norm. That is enrichment or that is above and beyond and should be reserved for enrichment-not the expected. It’s like luxuries-today’s luxuries are tomorrow’s norms.

I’m not saying I have the perfect solution. I don’t.

But I do know that kids crying while doing classwork is not something to applaud. It’s worrisome and indicative of a larger issue. One kid struggling with something should give alarm bells for who else might have that same issue, even if not manifested the same way.

So much of what we expect and how we view classroom challenges is societally impacted. Crafted almost. Similar to how styles and trends go in and out.

We so often see kids that excel in the arts or physical skills that could one day be of use for a vocational career-as less than. But it’s not fair. It’s not right. It’s not allowing for the human experience. The very human experience that will be appreciated literally right after one graduates from the school system. In the professional world we may not view manual labor jobs as lofty or elite but we sure are happy to pay someone to do a job that an intellectual cannot. When your toilet isn’t working you’ll pay the price for the plumber guru to get it right again.

Why can’t we appreciate the less intellectual seeming skills during the school years?

It’s so important to learn the art of reading and writing but no one succeeds in the same way and simply viewing them differently-which ultimately becomes clear to them subtly or overtly-only hurts the child’s self-concept.

Is this outlook serving us?

I think not.

I think that I’ve seen way more improvement in my students’ academics when I’ve shown appreciation for their “other” skills too. Because we are full people. With full human pictures. Why, as an adult do I have permission to have skills in different areas from my peers? As long as I’m a functioning adult and can pay my rent and taxes-the view of my worth matters way less than it did in school-when I was constantly judged for my academic success and made to feel accordingly.

We need high standards but not in the subject areas where we currently have them.

We need high standards in behavior and social-emotional wellbeing. Something that so many adults struggle with today as we see so clearly in society-now especially. Entitlement, lack of understanding of cause and effect-not a care for people or the world around us.

Acting without thought.

How do you teach kids not to do that?

Can we try to focus on that a little more? Just a little less of a myopic focus might do us good.