“So
when students ask, “What if…” I tell them to try it. Play. See
what you get. If it doesn’t work, who cares? If it does work, you may have come
up with something that pushes knitting forward a little bit.”
I play the “What If…” game a lot
in my life. Sometimes it keeps me from doing something I really want to do so I
try to finish the sentence with “What is the worst thing that could happen?”
and as long as physical pain or death is not an answer, it helps put the fear
in perspective.
“So when students ask, “What
if…” I tell them to try it. Play. See what you get. If it doesn’t
work, who cares? If it does work, you may have come up with something that
pushes knitting forward a little bit.”
Franklin Habit was talking about
knitting in this post but I think this attitude also applies to education and
teaching.
Many teachers are always worried
about “What if…”
- What if I make mistakes?
- What if my lesson is terrible?
- What if my students don’t “get it” and get frustrated?
- What if the experiment doesn’t work?
I feel like many of my lessons
ended up as experiments. I hoped it would work out and I planned it as best as
I could. I took in consideration all the “what ifs” and tried to account for any
of them. So what is the worst thing that can happen? They don’t get it and I
have to try something different tomorrow. If I make a mistake, the students
will see I’m human and not a perfect being.
Students are worried about “What
if…”
- What if I make mistakes?
- What if people think I’m stupid?
- What if I look silly while trying?
- What if I don’t “get it” and the teacher gets mad at me?
I try to head off my students’
“what ifs…” at the beginning and sometimes often every week. I tell them that
an error is not a terror. As long as no one gets hurt or dies, we can always
redo. If people think you are stupid when you make a mistake, it is only
because they are hiding their own fears and relief that it wasn’t them making
the mistake. Anyone who tries something that will make them a better person
will never look silly. And the most important thing of all – I will not get mad
if you don’t understand it. We will just have to look for a different way to
help you figure it out. We both may get frustrated but that only means that we
care. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t have any feelings about it so that is
okay. We will work on this together.
How do you handle the “What
ifs…”? Please share.
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