Tenderness vs. Rigor

We educators are conflicted by a desire to be affirming and sensitive to students (and colleagues) experiencing stress and anxiety, on the one hand, and on the other hand, to challenge them to grow and develop new skills, produce new work, and learn to push themselves in order to be truly college/career/community ready. I would say that most of our PLC work, including what happens on the fly such as in the break room, is about this balance. We come out of meetings with fresh commitment to addressing both social-emotional needs and rigor (not to the point of rigor mortis–see this post), but at the end of the day, acknowledge with frustration or guilt that the balance was not really there, again.

Sometimes we look back and compare our own experiences in a more “traditional” system, wondering why, and if, it “worked” for us, and why not fall back on that, being at least more familiar (we have so much to do already!). Or we drift toward judging current this generation of students as oversensitive, weak, or lazy. Personally, I sometimes wonder if there’s something in the water — microplastics (NIH review article)? PCBs (CDC article)? Or maybe it’s EMFs (here’s an article on that).

We also question the attitudes of students’ families toward our efforts–do they even support the idea of academic success, or are we just babysitters? Or, on the other hand, do they “get” that we are sometimes easing off on academic requirements in order to make sure our students feel “seen” and affirmed, and grow in those important “soft” skills as well as the three Rs?

Is the new acknowledgement of how hard life is for young people these days, and the destigmatization of expressing this, dumbed us down as a culture, in terms of requiring training in real world knowledge and skills?

We know some of our students come in raring to go, with attitudes, abilities, and support that can launch them on a trajectory of high achievement if only we can stay enough ahead of them. And there are others with a variety of social-emotional and intellectual challenges that mean the progress will be slower despite highly effective practices on the part of educators. So how do we help each one?

In my thought experiments I have streamed students into ability levels like in the old days–not to the point my generation experienced, with 7th-9th grade divided into five categories from “brightest” on down and SpEd students in their own isolated group, but just a little–say dividing into those who are held to the “priority” learning standards only, and those who can learn more and faster with less hand-holding. It would be all according to data, of course, with an element of student choice. And fluid throughout the year, with learning activities addressing a range of needs in each group. Here’s an article on the pros and cons of streaming.

We do that already, if unofficially. We don’t always call it streaming, but addressing learning needs and challenges, and it is a delicate and challenging art. We excuse, grade differently, offer bonus work, hold different students to different standards or means of showing learning. We embed assessment instead of giving universal final exams so that we don’t favor students who either cram successfully or can actually remember and reconstruct all important ideas by reading and writing under pressure.

This is the part where I try to wrap it up with a neat conclusion. Which should be more important, tenderness or rigor? Should we set up student streams or tracks where we dole out different balances for different types of students?

My own students know that as a science teacher, that’s not my style. I usually just say It’s complicated–look at the evidence, the environment, and the requirements, and make a reasoned decision. Re-evaluate as you go ahead and act on your working hypothesis, because the world is dynamic and we need to both depend on tried and true strategies, and to evolve new ones. But especially, remember the apparently unrealistic vision which nevertheless drives you, and take one year, one week, one day, one moment, at a time.

 

Go ahead and teach grit, but not by dishing out gravel.

I haven’t read the book yet, and I’m sure it’ll be well written, full of insight, and helpful in my practice, just like Mindset, the other contender for the staff’s summer book choice. But as I confessed to the principal when I picked up my copy of Grit by Angela Duckworth, I don’t like the language. Grit is what gets in your teeth from poorly washed salad greens, or in your pants after visit to the beach.

I feel that same distaste for with that other trendy word, “rigor.” The dictionary and I associate it with mortis and other highly unpleasant experiences.  Rigor is now to be seen as something we should purposely provide in our classroom experiences. In order to foster grit, I suppose.

Yes, I know the value of perseverance, and the need, now more than ever, in an age of instant gratification, to help students push through difficulties, work patiently over the long term, face as much boredom as necessary to discover their creativity. But what I object to is emphasizing only the negatives–life is hard, school isn’t always fun, what doesn’t kill you, etc. To less skilled, less all-in, less creative and hardworking educators, it might justify expecting students to put up with crappy classes in the name of growth, and give the impression that enjoyable experiences are to be, if not entirely avoided, then minimized as a necessary evil. I can hear them now: “Students, you don’t have to like me; you don’t have to like math; you might just hate this class; but you have to show GRIT, ’cause that’s what its’ all about!” I expect to hear about the opening of a new school with “Boot Camp” in its name any day now. It will attract a certain type of person.

What ever happened to delight-directed learning? Okay, so that wasn’t ever much used in public education circles, but I sure heard about it a lot as a homeschooler, thought about it, and tried for it. I tried to have a basic “table time,” for math and handwriting, and sometimes things I as an adult thought were important, such as memorizing poetry, but then it was, “Run along and find something interesting to do until chore time (and if you can’t come up with anything, chore time starts now).”  Some of the most meaningful experiences my kids had were while pursuing their own passions and interests, because they wanted to persevere trough the difficulties they encountered (The rest came through chores, some of which can also have their satisfactions).

I hope I can still make a place for delight in the way I work with students in public school. The rigor, challenges will always be available–I don’t believe in avoiding those, and students will often need to grow in grit, perseverance, but let’s start with delight, enticement, wonder, enthusiasm, and confidence that what we have to teach is worth learning, is inherently interesting. Whenever possible, let’s kindle fascination, vision, desire—the drives that will create the momentum to drive through those challenges and not give up. And along the way, the more happy memories associated with learning math, science, art, whatever, the more likely students are to continue learning when no one’s giving a report card.

More on annoyingly trendy lingo: Rigor, Grit, Collaboration

 

Rigor, as in mortis?

Question on teacher job application: How do you ensure that there is rigor in your classroom?

(Here’s how I would have liked to answer the above question. I gave a somewhat milder response to stay under the 1500 character max.

This is a post I started weeks ago, then found that another teacher’s similar comments on “rigor” had been picked up by a blog I follow. Guess I’ll put this out there too.)

One definition of rigor is “a sudden feeling of cold with shivering, accompanied by a rise in temperature, often with copious sweating, especially at the onset or height of a fever; short for rigor mortis.” Aside from this medical sense, rigor is associated with inflexibility, difficulty, and severity. Some educators have adopted “rigor” as a stated value, with the meaning (one would hope) being limited to “challenge.” This emasculated sense of the word may come to predominate over the traditional one, but “challenge” seems what is wanted as a word here, because unlike rigor, which can be a precursor of death, challenge is an essential element of growth, including the growth we foster in education.

Where there is challenge in a classroom, the evidence manifests in two basic ways. For students with a growth mindset, there is active, interested engagement and anticipation of accomplishment. Students with a fixed mindset, in contrast, exhibit discomfort, frustration, and, if the teacher is not careful, fear of failure and the onset of mental rigor mortis. It’s easy to deal with students who enjoy challenge—they practically teach themselves if presented with appropriate guidance and resources. Creating rigor there is about connecting that natural and relatively uninhibited drive to learn with well constructed and timely lessons incorporating content and process skills, rich resources, and the means of synthesizing and applying learning. Highly motivated students who react negatively to an overly directive or restricted approach need more freedom, while motivated but disorganized or easily distracted students need more structure and encouragement.

Inspiring the other less eager students, those whose basic attitude toward learning, whether academic or personal, is to escape or avoid discomfort, is the teacher’s special challenge. The teacher should continually foster an atmosphere where these students feel safe taking risks, so building community and a consistent routine is very important. These students need frequent positive feedback; they also need help connecting prior understanding with new and grasping the value of what they are learning. Pacing is also important, as the brain does not learn well under duress. Humor, a sense of being cared for and valued, and the fostering of a “need to know” drive help these insecure students to press on. If everything is in place and students experience not just external reinforcement but the personal sense of gratification that comes with success and growth, all students can enjoy challenge, and there will be no need for inducing shivering or copious sweating in pursuit of rigor in the classroom.

By the way, I heard that the teacher who started using the “rigor” term has regretted it. I agree that it’s a poor use of terminology, and that the term rigor should be reserved for medical emergencies.