Last week I had a meltdown.
Never unusual; but, this one was purposeful.
All year I have tried, often subversively, to attach a degree of
urgency to the
work I assign in my classes, particularly the work I assign to my
AP students.
I am charged with trying to get high school juniors to pass a freshman college composition course, an exam I know many of my adult friends, even English majors could not pass (and no, I'm not talking about you). It is timed. And it is extremely difficult. The work I assign is specifically, strategically designed to allow them to understand, retain, and apply the often brand new skills they need to learn in order to pass this exam. At the appointed time, they must exhibit some level of mastery. Problem is that I have only a handful of students in a class of about 30 who seem to feel the urgency in the way I wish them to feel it. I say this only because they often do not do their homework--which is always a combination of critical reading, writing and thinking. If they do not do the homework, I know they may pass my class (because of the weight given essays and tests, projects, etc.), but they may not have developed enough automaticity with the needed skills to succeed on the AP exam. Thursday of last week, as we approach the test date, most of the class walked in not having read, nor having written what I assigned. We had to have a talk.
I try not to add any stress to children's lives, so I kept my voice
even. I first asked
these youngsters what happened. No
consistent response. I
thought maybe--the moon--the game--the BET Awards--what could it
have been? The
sun (it was a sunny week)? I got a whole bunch of I just didn't do it. One
said, "You know, I think I have A-D-D." I didn't say I
think so too, but instead,
"Hummm...maybe you need to look into that. Tell your mom." Following her
semi-legitimate excuse came a cacophony of shoulder shrugs: shoulders up, smile,
shoulders down, befuddled looks. I was befuddled, frustrated beyond frustration
and ready to just say F-it.
You guys don't care, why should I?
But that would
not be very teacherly of me...I searched for a connection.
"I wanna get real with you guys. Can I do that?"
"Of
course, Ms. Keeble." They smile so innocently.
"You
are reminding me of myself when I was your age.” They giggle, imagining me a
teenager.
“All
of you are smart, very smart.
Sometimes when you’re smart like I was, like you are, maybe you
think you don’t have to work like everyone else does.”
“School
and grades always came fairly easy for me, so I learned to get by by doing
things last minute or not doing them at all. I tried to figure out what was mandatory and what I could
get away with not doing. And if
I’m going to be very real about it, I also thought that some work that we were
assigned was for those other kids to do because they didn’t know stuff—not like
I did.”
“Can any of you identify?” Furtive smiles and mumbles fill the room.
“Truth
is that I learned to be lazy. All
my successes piled up to give me an out. And I wanted an out because I had no discipline. That worked for a long time, but as I got older, it worked
less and less. Outside the purview of limited vision, students my same age, were learning what I didn't have sense enough to know I need to learn. My nonchalance
outted me. Competition grew. My poor work habits left me standing in
the middle of a room looking like a clown.”
“I will never forget what my high school English teacher wrote in my yearbook, ‘You are one of the few people I know who can really think and maybe one day you will decide that the work is worth it.’ That was the moment it clicked for me. He said the exact right thing and I was for the first time able to see how I was taking something for granted.” I’m hoping they hear me. But I don’t know. I never know. What inspires young people, or people in general to make adjustments to long-standing deleterious behaviors? For me, at the core of my behavior, the desire to take the less challenging option, almost always was a desire to avoid feeling ill at ease. The uneasiness could be physical (often) or emotional (more often).
Physical discomfort arose whenever I had to exercise a muscle or organ that I hadn’t often extended: like my lungs whenever I ran long distances; or my quads when I had to move furniture; or my abs when I had to bend over to clean my room; or my biceps whenever I had to clean the bathtub. After a start, the muscle would begin to hurt, then ache. I did not like that feeling and at the very moment I thought about doing some laborious task, I remembered that I didn’t like it. Now some people learned, or were taught that the pain subsides after a time, that it eases the more you use a weak, under exercised apparatus. No matter if anyone ever told me so, I never learned that. I always remembered the pain that comes before the proverbial gain. The pain dominated my thinking.
So if I wanted to stretch toward any intended goal, I needed to push myself beyond where I felt comfortable. I never did that. I never knew that. I never did long-distance anything. I never pushed myself. I thought that if it hurt, it meant I needed to stop—take it easy. That meant I wouldn’t do something if it presented as a challenge. In a sense, I learned to do only activities that came fairly easy to me at the first try, or if upon short practice, I could master the task. That attitude left a lot undiscovered. It also led me to disengage from potential challenges to my status quo without even consciously knowing I was doing so. I imagine a number of my AP students can relate to that experience. "Nahhhhh..., I'm good." It’s a hard lesson to learn.
Not one of us is exempt from the work. Those tedious tasks, repetitive, redundant, and dull in the extreme are necessary for growth, necessary for the acquisition of the skills that allow for substantive contribution to society and to the world-at- large. We have to do the menial tasks: scales, stretches, revisions, drafts—take those innumerable tiny, un-sexy steps. There's no joy in it except when you finish. But how can we otherwise equip ourselves to live in a meaningful way, to help someone who may be waiting down the road somewhere not even knowing we’re on our way? That someone may not have had the benefits of access, support, or quiet that we so often take for granted.
I remember trying to get one of my super smart, but totally unfocused young students to imagine a little girl somewhere, a girl she doesn’t yet know, but a little girl who may/may not look like her—a little girl who she will run into one day, who will need the benefit of what she (this student) has to offer. Trying to inspire her to do her work, I asked her if she planned on being prepared to help that little girl. She said of course. I said Ok, then do your homework please.
Our world, our communities, with so many complex, demanding, long-standing and dreadful challenges to meet and overcome, need our extra efforts. We have to do the work because when called upon, we have to be able to share the benefit of our preparedness.
