1 Year

It's been a year since we first welcomed our little girl into the world. Watching her laugh and play, it's almost like she's full grown, but I know she has so much more to grow. It's still hard to believe. I feel like I blinked a year passed by leaving me with my head spinning. It's amazing how much a child can grow in a year. From sleeping almost 24/7 to now where she feeds herself and a 30-minute cat nap is pretty good. It got me thinking about our approach to development in the education system.

Small Steps

As my wife and I observe our daughter's growth, we celebrate every minute step she takes developmentally. From pointing at pictures when we ask her where the dog is to pulling up on various pieces of furniture without falling, we cheer and photograph and tell everyone about her accomplishments. We are hyper-focused on cheering on every small step.

In school, I think we often get so caught up in the big picture of where students need to get to that we forget to celebrate every small step in the right direction. I'm not saying that we need a ceremony and awards for everything a student achieves, but we need to be excited that they are moving. I think we get so caught up on the finish line and forget that a race like K-12 education is a marathon composed of steps taken. Each milestone deserves a caring adult cheering them on and each step needs encouragement to take the next.

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Confucius

I think we forget the power that a kind word or a pat on the back can have in influencing a student to keep going. Sure our students are going to suffer setbacks and failures and they certainly need our support during these times, but they also need us to cheer them on when they get it right.

In addition to celebrating our daughter's small steps, we also try to challenge her to take on the next challenge. If she pulls up, we try to coax her to step toward us. We will give her new foods to try and model new words for her to hear and hopefully repeat. We can't forget that students need these small challenges to build up to bigger successes. Our lessons and curriculum need to be designed to create milestones for the students to strive towards. Sometimes I think we set the finish line so far down the road that many give up before seeing it.

Internal vs External

Our little girl is growing... literally. She gains a pound or two at every doctor's visit, and her legs are starting to stretch out with her waistline. She's healthy, and growing and the signs of that growth are outwardly visible. Growth isn't just external, however, and I know that behind those clever eyes, her mind is growing and developing. It's easy to get blinded to internal development by the external.

While external growth is often evident over the years with students too, I believe internal growth is the most significant during school-age years. It's easy to miss the massive growth that a student goes through in even a semester because it's internal and we don't have strong methods to visualize that growth. Even students are unaware of the massive leaps they make internally.

What if we found ways to visualize that internal growth externally? I've often thought that portfolios are a powerful way to demonstrate growth. They are a logistical nightmare to sustain at scale, but I think it'd be worth it. No one is going to celebrate tests or practice problems. If we could get students to create real-world things to demonstrate their learning; we could showcase that growth.

Individuality

Several of our friends had children around the same time that our daughter was born. It's been fun seeing them grow up together and I imagine it'll be even more fun as they get older. One of the things that struck me so far is how different their rates of development are. Even though they are all the same age, they are very different developmentally and that's perfectly normal.

Too often our artificial cohorts of students imply the idea that they should all be developing at the same rate. This is a ridiculous notion, and the system that we place them in is predicated on this false premise. We need to rethink our systems in a way that acknowledges students' individuality, and finds ways to challenge and celebrate thier unique learning journeys.

I think the key is to provide them with choices. The goal of an educator should be to provide the appropriate stimulation to produce growth, but then we need to step back and let students make some choices about how they demonstrate understanding and mastery. I love the quote from Viktor Frankel below because I believe it captures the power of choosing our response.

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
Viktor E. Frankl

The classroom should be that space between stimulus and response that provides students the opportunity to choose their responses. I think if we could design our schools to allow for this kind of flexibility and openness to inquiry we would see astronomical growth. I'm reminded of a plant that is root bound. When the plant's roots exceed the volume available in the pot, then its growth will stagnate and the plant can even wither. Students are like a root-bound plants sometimes in our schools. They have so much more potential than the space we give them to grow, and the best thing we could do is to give them some space to set down roots deeper.

Final Thoughts

I'm so excited to celebrate one year with my little girl. I'm also challenged to find ways to celebrate each day with my students. How can we design systems that celebrate each year and each step towards that goal of graduation and life as a productive citizen?  What would happen if we stopped prescribing growth and instead focused on providing the stimulus and space for students to grow? That's a world I'm excited to be a part of and help build.