Chapter 12:
The new. The difficult. The challenging. The seemingly impossible. That is the kind of risky territory where we constantly travel as learners.
We frequently face two options when we lead our students into highly challenging content. We can soften the challenge so that it becomes more attainable. Or we can embrace the fact that the educational territory where we are asking our students to travel is demanding — it may even seem impossible to navigate. Which of those two courses of action are your students most likely to thank you later for providing? Your students will thank you for allowing them to face the kinds of challenges that truly allow them to learn.
Here is the reality: If you face something and find that you struggle, that does not mean that you can’t do it. Instead, it means that you are perfectly positioned for powerful learning.
So I choose to ask my students to face what seems impossible.
“Girls and boys, I have a new Big Idea to share with you today: What Seems Impossible Now May Soon Be Possible. This idea is very important because it gives us permission to do two things. First, it allows us to face really challenging ideas. Second, it gives us permission to time travel, to anticipate what the challenge may look like from the future, after we have found a way to succeed.
“Notice that it says, ‘seems impossible.’ The feeling that something seems impossible is an important feeling. We all experience that feeling many times. Many times life is difficult, it’s challenging, and it hands us things that we feel like we can never overcome. Those times make it difficult to see past that moment.
“That is exactly where this idea invites us to time travel. It invites us to know that there are solutions, pathways, and answers. And at some point, if we choose to work hard, we can look back and realize that there was a moment that once seemed impossible, but we found a way to the possible.
“That’s a pretty amazing realization, and it’s even more amazing if we anticipate it in the middle of the impossible. If something seems impossible, I want you to do the opposite of letting it stop you. I want you to notice that it is challenging, and know that there is a time — coming soon — when it will become something you are able to do.
“You can overcome what seems impossible. And you will.
“So when we step into ideas in our class that feel like they are very challenging, I want you to welcome those ideas, and I want you to remember that you will look back on the moment of difficulty and recognize that you overcame it.”
Without space to process new ideas, a student’s self-perception as a learner can become impacted, especially when overcoming the “impossible” feels out of reach. Providing space to process learning before transitioning into a new subject or additional concepts honors the depth of the learning that we are asking students to explore. Journaling is an excellent way to encourage students to validate their own learning and firmly establish new layers of ideas, experiences, and connections. Allowing students time to journal in class provides them with the space to further explore challenging ideas and to begin building their thinking in personalized and powerful ways.
Journals come in a variety of styles and formats. For instance, you could provide each student with a “What Seems Impossible” journal, where they can record and review their series of successes over time. However, I think a much more practical and open-ended option is to give students a generic journal and begin giving them a variety of reflective icons to use in it. For example, you could ask the students to jot a symbol that represents “seems impossible” next to a journal entry. It will be helpful to you, as a reader of the journal, to teach the class a single, shared icon. An icon to represent what seems impossible may simply be a stop sign with the word “seems” above it.
Other types of icons you may want to share with your students could include the following:
When I was student teaching, my mentor teacher, John Emerson, introduced me to student academic journals. One of the most practical tips he shared with me in terms of managing these journals was to use five different colors of journals (or to somehow code the journals) so that one journal color would be collected on Mondays, another color on Tuesdays, and so on. That single tip allowed me to sustain the process of interacting with student journals because I soon learned that I could not keep up with reading all reflections every day. Eventually, I moved to four categories of journals rather than five, because I was often exhausted on Friday. It also helped me to keep pace on four-day weeks.
Another tip for implementing student journaling is to encourage students to only write on the top half of each page. The blank space on the bottom of the page is not for teacher responses. If you choose to use responses, try to keep your responses in the margins of the journal. The white space on the bottom of the page may seem like a waste of paper initially. However, that space is for students to eventually go back and interact with their earlier thinking. At some point, a student may return to that stop sign with the word “seems” above it, read what is written next to that stop sign, and recognize and journal in the white space below that entry about something that seemed impossible and has become possible — even easy. Imagine the effect that kind of self-affirmation could have on the student the next time he or she sketches a stop sign with the word “seems” above it. That stop sign may even become a welcome icon for a student who now understands in a personal way that facing what seems difficult can yield impressive growth. That student may begin to anticipate and seek out the types of connections that lead into the heart of what seems impossible.
I strongly encourage you to not limit student journaling opportunities to the end of the class. Invite students to reflect throughout the class and to write in their journals at any point during the lesson. Not all students will take you up on this, especially when you first suggest it. But there may come a time when, in the middle of a lesson, you notice a student opening a journal and jotting down a question. Or you might look around and see several students responding to your instruction, or their interactions, with surprises, sketches, and other notes that reflect their processing, thinking, and wondering right in the midst of the lesson. These students are not off-task. They are possibly more on-task than you had even hoped. In those moments, you will know that your students are making connections by revealing their thinking to themselves, and to you as well. And remember, learning is about making connections.
Much like my students, I am encouraged by the idea of “time travel” in terms of challenges. Looking back through my journaling allows me to see what I have already overcome. But there is value in projecting forward as well. Looking at a challenge from the perspective of knowing that I will be able to look back on it to see what I learned because of it encourages me to push ahead. When I see a challenge, I try to also look beyond the challenge to the victory on the other side.
As a teacher, Big Idea 12 challenged me — and gave me permission — to lead my students into difficult territory. The idea prompts me to ask tough questions — questions that cannot always be answered in a day, a week, or even in a month. I realized that many of the questions that are most worth asking are the ones that cannot be easily answered. This Big Ideas invites me to ask my students to do things that feel like they are out of reach.
Perhaps best of all, Big Idea 12 reminds me that I need not place artificial, protective boundaries on myself or my students. We understand that learning challenges will arise. We also understand that if we work hard, we can overcome those challenges and look back on our accomplishments with pride. No, I do not soften the challenge. My students and I expectantly dare to venture into new and risky learning territory. We know that what seems impossible now may soon be possible. But in order for that to happen, we have to be willing to face the impossible.