Fading into the Background

A couple of weeks ago, Pastor Kyle talked about Where’s Waldo and how easy it was for people to fade into the background. Waldo and Jesus can be overlooked in all the “busy-ness” around them. He also talked about how the artist would draw in Waldo last but Jesus was different because Jesus wasn’t an afterthought. He is always with us.

This reminded me of my years when I was a student. I was very quiet and didn’t want any attention drawn to me. I wanted to fade away in the background. Sitting in the rows of desks, I would try to hide my body behind the person in front of me. I never raised my hand to answer questions even if I knew the answer. The reason I did this was that I was scared. For many years, I faced a lot of bullying and hoped that if the bullies didn’t notice me, they would leave me alone.

I was also afraid of failure and giving the wrong answer. If I did this, it would also cause the teacher to pay attention to me. I felt that my parents expected me to be perfect. Making a mistake would disappoint my parents and I would be crushed.

I just wanted to survive my school years and I feared that if I didn’t fade into the background, I wouldn’t make it.

This had me thinking about many of my students. I’m not talking about the students who act out or craze attention. Some of my students were very quiet and withdrawn. Many of my students were bullied because they had special needs. Other students picked on them because they were different. Some of my students had years of difficulties in school, so they saw my class as just one more year of more difficulty.

As a teacher, I would try to seek these students out. I didn’t want them to feel like an afterthought. I wanted my students to feel safe and not overlooked. If they were being bullied, I wanted them to feel safe. I wanted them to see that I noticed what was happening and would stop the situation. I also didn’t want my students to feel afraid of making mistakes. I wanted them to see that these were just learning opportunities. An error should not be a terror.

I wanted to be like Jesus and show my students that I would be there for them. They were not alone. I didn’t want my students to have the same school experience that I grew up with. I wanted to be their safety net and show them that learning opened the door to so many possibilities. I wanted to help them face the bullies and stand up to them. I wanted to help them face the fear of failure and overcome this obstacle that keeps them from learning.  Together, we can be successful because no one walks alone. 

Do you see these students in your classes? How do you help them? Please share.

Don’t Be Afraid

In Afraid of afraid from Seth Godin's Blog by Seth Godin shares,

“Fear of being afraid keeps things on our to-do list forever, keeps important conversations from happening and shifts how we see our agency and leverage in the world.”

Everyone is afraid of failure and it doesn’t matter if they are a student or not. This fear is developed as a child when we are learning how to become independent. When we are learning to become independent whether it is feeding ourselves or learning to walk, we don’t have any fear of failure because we don’t know what failure is. As we get a little older, adults keep encouraging us to keep trying and keep learning. It seems like that once we enter the school system that we are measured against others. Suddenly we are evaluated and measured against what others believe are standards. As some fall behind, they can be classified as lacking in development or just plain lazy. The fear creeps in that we aren’t as good as the next person.

This fear can paralyze us from moving forward and developing new skills.

In my classroom, I want to help my students overcome this fear. I want to know that they are not alone and that everyone faces this fear of failure. I want my students to know that I will be there to encourage them and support them so that if they do fail, they will have the courage to try again. I want to teach the students how to be supportive of one another and to find ways to help each other be more successful.

Learning to be supportive and helpful is not something that students automatically know how to do. Once they enter the school system, they learn to be competitive and to try to be at the head of the class. This is when children learn to be cruel to anyone that is different. These are also learned behaviors so why not teach students that while competition is good, compassion is also a good behavior to have?

I begin by testing students to see where they are in their learning. I start with giving them assignments that I know will bring success. When they start feeling more confident, I introduce new things in small doses that I can be their support and help them be successful. The more successful they are will allow me to slowly back off the support. I still support them but also allow them more independence. When they falter, they will know they can come to me for help without worrying about looking weak. Soon they learn to look to their classmates for support and before long, they are willing to take the risk of learning harder skills. They are learning not to be afraid.

How do you teach students not to be afraid? Please share.

Photo by Jaqueline Fritz on Unsplash

Face Fear

In The essential quality of the boogie-man from Seth Godin's Blog, Seth Godin states,

“The boogie man doesn’t exist. That’s why he’s such an effective example, and why you should ignore him. As soon as you look him in the eye, he vanishes.”

My students see learning as the boogie man. As soon as they started falling behind, learning became scary. The more mistakes they made, the bigger the scariness became.

As a child, when I got scared at night, I could run to my parents. Eventually, I got too old to run to my parents. Then I would pull the covers over my head and try to ignore whatever was scaring me. Sometimes I would try to avoid bedtime because I knew I would have nightmares and get scared.

My students act the same way. As younger students, they went to the teacher for help. As they saw their peers acting more independently, they might have been ridiculed for going for help too often. They tried to work on their own but they started falling further behind. Eventually, they tried to ignore the problem by either not doing the work or acting out to take attention away from the problem.

I needed to help my students face the fear. I had to talk to them like a coach and help them get passed the fear. First, I had to get them to talk about what is the worst that could happen. By verbalizing the fear, it decreases in size. Then I want them to know that they won’t face the fear alone and I will be right there beside them. When you aren’t alone, you feel stronger and less afraid. When small successes happen, fear decreases in size even more. It is also important to talk about setbacks and not let fear grow back in size. Again, by verbalizing the fears, it keeps it from growing.

When success happens, the student can look back and see that the fear of failure was just like the boogie man. Making mistakes is not the end of the world.

Photo by DDP on Unsplash

Disappearing Fears

In Facing our fears from Seth Godin's Blog , Seth Godin shares,

“Of course, we may think we’re looking at our fears, dead on, but it’s more likely we’re just seeing a distraction, a shadow of what’s actually holding us back.”

Sometimes our fears keep us from doing things that will help us be successful in meeting our goals.

Fear can keep a person from taking action.

Sometimes my students have not been successful in many things so the fear of failure is a real thing in their minds.

No one likes to fail.

It is my job to convince the students that failures are merely opportunities to do something different. Looking at a problem from a different viewpoint can make a huge difference.

I need to show them that this fear of not succeeding is merely a distraction and that they should not let it get in the way of doing what needs to be done. These distractions will constantly be thrown at them all through life and they can’t let this distraction keep them from continuing their journey.

It may be easier to allow the distraction to cause you to stop forward movement but then you will be stuck where you are. You will be in the same spot while everyone else leaves you behind. They will be experiencing new things, learning new things, and maybe finding new ways to do things while you are stuck in the same place watching them.

Don’t let fear be a distraction. Move forward through the distraction and conquer it. It won’t be the only distraction but the more you get through them, the easier it will be to move forward. Don’t let the fear grow into a bigger distraction than it really is. It reminds me of the saying, “Don’t feed the monster!”

How do you help your students face their fears? How do you help them move forward? Please share.

Photo by Paul Garaizar on Unsplash