This morning, I posted this on Twitter:
And yet, here I am, 2 hours later writing a blog post…
Full disclosure. I’ve also checked my Twitter feed & notifications 3 times.
And I’ve also cried. Seriously sobbed.
Over the past few days, I have done EVERYTHING to avoid working on my assignment for a Research Methods course I am taking as part of my MEd.
On Wednesday, I hosted my first Coffee EDU. Though I was really worried that it would just be me and a book, it turned out to be an amazing gathering of educators and the conversation was so rich. When I got home, I was exhilarated and exhausted and couldn’t possibly work on my assignment.
Yesterday, instead on working on it, I signed up for the EduMatch Passion Pitch moderated by Sarah Thomas as part of Shelly Sanchez-Terrell’s 30Goals e-conference (which you should really check out if you are NOT working on an assignment). I had never done anything that spur-of the moment before. I thought I would throw up I was so nervous, but I got to meet Shelly and Sarah, whom I’ve admired on Twitter and several other really great educators who shared their passions.
Then last night, instead of working on my assignment, I revised a blog post and added it as a guest post to Edu_match (again something that I would recommend if you have some spare time). It was awesome and I was temporarily ecstatic, until I sat back down to my course work, realizing that I really should have used those precious hours to get caught up.
I told myself that I was doing these things to “put myself out there”, to “try something new”. I did things that disrupted my routine, in the hope that the adrenaline rush that comes with trying something new might somehow help.
And of course, it’s summer, so I need to spend some time with my family by the pool, planning our summer road trip, and watching our favourite Netflix shows.
But the reality is. I am avoiding my assignment(s). Because I feel completely and utterly out of my element here. I am re-reading research articles over and over again and I quite literally still don’t understand the “research methodology” or the “conceptual framework” at work or why the “standard deviation” really matters. I may as well be reading a foreign language and I have never felt quite so stupid in my life.
Does any of this make sense to you, because it sure makes no sense to me!
(From: Children’s utilization of emotion expectancies in moral decision-making Steven G. Hertz* and Tobias Krettenauer Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, 2014)
I know that I SHOULD contact my professor and that she will be more than willing to help me, but I don’t think I will. I will go to Youtube, ask a friend, and keep struggling through it. I have even decided that I will be satisfied with a lower grade, even though I really won’t. I know when I get through this, I will be better for it, but the feeling of failure is a palpable right now: an anchor weighing me down and I’m drowning.
I wonder if this is what my own students felt when we read Shakespeare together. Me, with a passion for the nuances of the language, my students completely and utterly befuddled. Is that why some of them didn’t hand anything in or were completely off-task in class? Or why my students didn’t come for extra help when they needed it? Or resorted to plagiarizing?
Of course it is.
Self regulation and resiliency are not easy skills to teach, develop, or support. I think recognizing that might be a good place to start.
I will start by moving this post from Draft to Published and go and work on my assignment.
N.B. This post reflects a moment in time. You will note from the comments that I did seek help from my professor (who was incredibly supportive) and that many of my peers were struggling as much as I was. Nonetheless, this moment of reflection been an important one, for me. How do we deal with the reality of teaching students who may be feeling the struggle? How do we stay in tune with that and how do we support them along the way?
