Quickly and Easily

Yesterday, Debbie responded to my post with the following comment:

I love the "by asking them the right questions we are teaching them how to ask the right questions themselves".

If you have to repeat something a dozen times then what you are saying or how you are saying it isn't being received in the manner intended. Time to say something different.

So often I hear parents and educators complaining about some problem with kids and they don't look at how they are creating or adding to the problem. Child "A" seeks attention -- ok, so what are you going to do about it? The child needs attention! Child B refuses to do such-and-such. And why is this a problem? What is the underlying issues that need to be resolved before such-and-such will happen?

We are mentors and teachers and yet we forget that, when we come to a problem that doesn't resolve quickly and easily. 

These days, we are all taught that everything should resolve quickly and easily.  Students believe firmly that everything they do should be quick and easy, since that's what they are taught in their other classes.  And yet, they are willing to work for HOURS to beat that one video game on the SUPER HARD setting.  Why is this?

Well, Video Games aren't supposed to be EASY!  (well, games in general aren't supposed to be easy!)  But School, that's so boring and easy.  They can just COAST through it.

When my students hit something that doesn't get resolved quickly and easily, I remind them of the video game metaphor.  Remember, I tell them, Learning is a quest.  Provided with that metaphor, one of my students asked me, earlier this year, "Well, where are the cheat codes?"  I reminded him that it was more honorable to complete the quest without the cheat codes.  Then, one of my other students interjected, "Well, there are cheat codes, aren't there?  We know how to look interested.  We know how to write the kind of strange essay that our English Teacher wants..."

Why is it that we spend so long teaching the students that learning, that work, that thinking is easy?  It's not that they don't have the attention span, nor is it that they are lazy.  It's that the students are receiving the wrong message.

How do we send the RIGHT message?  The message that learning, that Thinking does not happen Quickly and Easily.  How do we make that happen?