winnowing 1: rescuing

Student teaching was rough both times in different ways--I think it's a bit rough for everyone.

This time around, my cooperating teacher and I were just completely different. We saw everything differently, had different instincts and values and ideas, etc. This was not always easy, but I did learn a lot from it. Some aspects of her practice I would really like to emulate, but other things, I disliked as much as she seemed to dislike my work. In the time since I finished up there, I have been reflecting on my experiences and trying to sort out which is which (emulate vs. trash).

One thing I got better at was the whole "rescuer" routine. Many teachers are compulsive rescuers. Rescuing, which I'd define as swooping down on a student the moment they start to struggle (so that they should never experience an instant of pain or confusion) is egocentric (savior complex, anyone?) and often counter-productive (it can be useful to struggle with a new idea, and it can be harmful to develop the habit of expecting that someone will remove all obstacles from your path the moment you wrinkle your cute little brow). Rescuing is an action that makes ME more comfortable (I feel guilty/panicky when my lesson is "making" a student struggle), instead of making it a priority to identify what the student is doing and what the student needs in that moment.

My cooperating teacher helped me to break this habit, which was a great step for me. However, she had a tendency to take it to the opposite extreme--"sink or swim!" A number of kids were shocked and demoralized by their struggles in the first few weeks of school, and never bounced back, just kept falling farther behind and getting more depressed. That was the "sink" part, and there were no swimming lessons; she seemed to think that either it didn't matter, or couldn't be helped.

So now it's a matter of trying to figure out what might be the "happy medium" between these two extremes. When is it helpful to swoop in, and when should I let the student struggle and acheive his/her own victories?

The really new concept (to me) is the idea that struggle and anxiety can be productive and useful. I really had a strong assumption that struggle and anxiety are just bad, bad, bad, and kids must be protected from them at all costs. But apparently that's not the case.

They did tell us in our teacher classes that all learning requires risk. I like what I understand of the theorist Vygotsky's "zone of proximal development" (definition here; a more extensive summary of Vygotsky's theory can be found here). The general idea is that between the comfort zone, where you can perform a task easily without help, and the zone of stuff that's way out of reach, there's a zone of tasks and activities that are within reach, but only with guidance and help.

It's essential to identify where each student's "zone of proximal development" is, because if you aim too high you depress and discourage them, while aiming too low can bore them or lull them into a false confidence. Stepping out of your comfort zone into what you can accomplish only with assistance is a risk-taking endeavor, and as such, will provoke anxiety.

The question is, how much is a reasonable level, and when do you say, "whoa, too much anxiety, let's take this back a step (or down a notch or whatever)"? And what do you do with students who learn to manipulate that response, so that they always generate help (rescuing) even when they might be capable of overcoming the challegne they face?

Needless to say, the idea that growth is necessarily accompanied by anxiety is very useful to me personally. Oh, you mean I'm supposed to be anxious? This is supposed to be hard? Well, in that case, I guess I can survive after all. ;-)