I feel a sense of urgency when I am in the classroom. I have a need to make sure all the standards and expectations are met that are determined by the school. I have my own personal goals that I’ve set for myself and if I don’t meet them, I feel discouraged. I feel the eagerness of my students who know that they are behind and they want to catch up to their peers. Yet, I also feel their anxiety and fear of failure.
It is hard to balance out this sense of urgency for this need for patience.
I know sometimes other people expect something from us and they have a need for urgency. Yet, we can let their need cause us to lower the quality of the results. I might have an urgent need for a piece of apple pie, so I will bake one. But if my urgency causes me to take it out of the oven before it is fully baked, it will probably taste awful. We need to make sure the timelines match the need for quality even if the need is urgent.
Sometimes we fall short of our goals because we want success to happen quickly and it won’t without practice and patience. Sometimes we learn from our mistakes which means progress will be a little slower. We feel impatient and discouraged when we make mistakes because we know that these experiences will slow us down. I explain to my students that all people feel this way. It is natural to feel this way and sometimes we have to give ourselves some room to grow.
Sometimes new learning doesn’t happen immediately. If we expect too much too quickly, we may be disappointed. Our brain has to process it and we might have to practice it before it becomes natural. Eventually what we have learned may become so natural that we don’t even think about it anymore.
That sense of urgency in the classroom comes from wanting to learn. I hope that my students never lose that sense of urgency even though they need to rein it in and learn to balance it with patience.
How do you handle urgency in the classroom? Please share.
Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash
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