Equity Focused | Inquiry Driven | Problem-Based-Learning | Transformational Leadership

There’s a game that I’ve played before and undoubtedly will play again when I find myself sitting around a table with family or friends called, “Just One Thing.” It always begins with the same question no matter who is at the table. “If you could only have one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?” Everyone who has ever played immediately knows their answer.

— Tacos — Ice Cream — Chocolate Cake — Pizza — Pasta —

And they don’t just know their answer. They are ready to stand up for their choice; defend it to all the wary doubters. For me, it’s pizza: crispy-crusted, cheese-laden, topping-rich pizza. I don’t care if it’s thin-crust-watching-my-figure-California-style, deep-dish-sauce-on-top-Chicago-style, or bigger-than-my-head-fold-it-in-half-and-let-the-grease-drip-down-my-arm-New-York-style. I can easily imagine, without much effort, how I would be completely satisfied with pizza for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All day. Every day. Three hundred sixty-five days of the year. In fact, I am absolutely guilty of having had pizza for every meal in a day more than once in my life.

And now, while you’re fighting the urge to go dig a fork into that cake in the fridge, you’re wondering what in the world this has to do with education.

How often do we as educators, rely on just one thing – even if it’s a really GOOD thing? How often do we use just one strategy, just one textbook, just one piece of technology, just one intervention tool, just one final assessment? How often are we exhausted and utterly frustrated at our students’ progress (or lack thereof)? And now the hardest question: how often do we pause in a moment in the middle of a day and see our students, really see them, and recognize for that half-second that their heads slumped, their desk doodling, and the half-hearted engagement might be because they are actually as exhausted as we are at their own progress and attempts to learn another new thing?

I get it. And I’m guilty of it. We have too many things on our plate. We have to-do lists that never get done. We have days that never end. We face work that never stays at work. We are fighting for fair compensation. We fear tragedy in an era of school shootings being a reality. We are digging into our own paychecks to enrich our students’ education. And it seems our students always need more than we feel like we can give them.

“Rarely does a single action get you outcomes.”

I heard this today. It was a passing statement that had nothing to do with pizza or education. But it was a statement that grabbed my attention as tangibly as if someone had grabbed me by my arms and shook me in my seat. As soon as it was said, everything that has enabled my “just one thing” mentality in my classroom and in my role as an educator flashed through my mind and I realized how easily I fall victim to the false security that just one thing is enough.

When we are able to strip away the expectations of a day, the constraints (valid and needed as they are) of the pacing calendar, and the textbook and supplemental resources that are aligned as best as they possibly can be to our state standards, and seek to understand what our students NEED, it is never the one thing. In fact, what they need is often a bit surprising. Sometimes they need a manipulative to really get that volume model because they are still developing their sense of spatial reasoning. Sometimes they need a sentence frame because they are still working on developing their written literacy, and starting from a blank piece of paper is really scary even if you know what you want to say. I bet we’ve all been THERE. And sometimes, in the face of feeling unable, incapable, frustrated, unsure, or overwhelmed, students need to know that they are more important than the task laid in front of them. They need a comforting reminder that a struggle today does not mean a struggle forever and that you are there to show up for them and believe in them.

So my lesson? Next time I notice a student communicating to me in all of their subtle ways that the thing in front of them, while it’s a good thing, is not THE thing they need, I will fight against my time constraint and pull out the manipulative. I will stifle my own frustration and try to put myself in my students’ shoes. And I will remember that I struggle all the time too, and sometimes I just need someone to remind me that the struggle is okay.

Author: Alexandra Laing