And How It Relates to Education
You’re tying your shoes incorrectly.
I can’t say that for sure. But I’d be willing to be bet.
A few years ago someone shared this short video with me:
After watching that video, I tied my shoes the “correct” way for a while.
But it was hard. So I went back to what I knew.
My guess is, you will, too. I promise, I won’t judge.
In education, though, this attitude is all too prevalent.
And that’s really unfortunate.
A few months back, I was in the copy room after hours. Another teacher was toiling away, and when I asked what kept her so long after the final bell, she said that she was trying something new in her classroom the next day, and it took a while to plan and create.
She wondered out loud (or maybe she was looking for some affirmation) if it was worth it. After all, she’d been teaching the lesson for more than a decade, and things had been fine until then.
Fine.
Like tying your shoes with a “weak-form knot.”
Could be better.
But fine got us this far, right? Why change now? It works most of the time.
I did my best to encourage this teacher. I didn’t follow up (I should have), so I have no idea if it stuck. But I hope it did.
Because our students deserve “strong-form” teaching.
The truth is, changing things up is hard. It requires deliberate planning and intentionality.
And in a profession with as little planning time and as exhausting as teaching is, it’s easy to wonder just how worth it is to throw out the old way of doing things and try to do something new.
Especially since we oftentimes don’t even know if the new way will work.
If you give up on tying your shoes “right,” I don’t blame you.
But I’d encourage you to not stop improving on the small things of teaching.
Our students are too valuable for that.