On the first day of every semester, I have students complete a challenge. Everyone is asked to stand up and then tasked with touching the door. The caveat is that they can only walk three steps to the door. Inevitably, the room goes silent, and a few timid students inch toward the door who have a clear path to reach it. For them, it is easy. This task seems insurmountable for students sitting in the back, on crutches, or having other physical restrictions. I wait and then repeat that they only have three STEPS to reach the door. Suddenly, creativity sparks as students hop, roll, cartwheel, and even carry others toward the door. If a student has a physical restriction, I'll push out my chair on wheels to guide them to the door. This experience is simple but powerful. Sometimes our paths are clear, and other times, we have the cards stacked against us.
This experience is why cultivating student agency is so important. Students must be empowered with skills to help them navigate adulthood, understand accountability, and recognize the importance of following through with commitments. To help them survive the pandemic, we took much of the accountability they once had off their plates well-intentioned, but in doing so, we took away some of their agency. They no longer solved their own problems and navigated their commitments with adult intervention. They lost the opportunity to develop their sense of agency because we were so focused on surviving daily. We forgot to help students see the bigger picture.
Regardless, seniors are going off into the world. No matter the path, we must prepare them to navigate life beyond high school. They will be confronted with the great picture of their lives in just three weeks - ready or not.
So how do we use our time wisely to prepare our exiting seniors for the next exciting chapter? How do we revise and improve our practices for students taking the seats of those who just matriculated?
Accountability has to fall on their shoulders.
I remember during the pandemic pleading with "strong students" to turn in their work. The assignment due date no longer mattered; I would grade every assignment that came my way because I wanted to connect with my students. I wanted to give feedback and help them grow, which often meant accepting late work. Social-emotional struggles were real and impacted us all while we were remote. Today, we are no longer remote. Obstacles still exist, but we cannot let past experiences be an excuse.
We need to set hard deadlines and high expectations. Students will rise to the challenge we give them, and when they do not, we must stand firm in allowing natural consequences to impact them. I am an empath who feels the emotions of others deeply. With this personality trait, I tend to extend grace naturally, but I have learned these past few weeks that I can still extend and give grace while standing firm with my expectations. Students won't grow if I justify or allow excuses to be reasons for allowing students to fall short of the bar.
Along with maintaining our standards and expectations, we must stop owning their problems.
I am guilty of internalizing others' problems. I am a mom who worries, and those instincts are triggered when I see my "big kids" struggling with time management, organization, and poor decisions. My worry does not help them grow. In conversations with students recently, I have been intentional with the pronouns I choose. Instead of using the inclusive "we," I have reframed my questions to be about the student and the choices the student is making. Some of my common questions recently have been:
- How does this situation make you feel?
- How do the consequences of your actions impact you moving forward?
- How are you going to plan your schedule so that you can complete x, y, and z?
- And my favorite: What do your choices communicate to others about you?
We need to continue to talk about career pathways and redefine lifelong learning.
We are all always learning. Learning can be academic, but it is often more holistic than that. Through our experiences, we learn to build better relationships, gain job-related skills, and solve problems. All of us fail, and those failures are powerful lessons -- sometimes difficult ones.
We have to teach our students that life will teach us all important lessons, and if we learn to listen, reflect, and question in those situations, we can and will continue to grow. The school of life never stops. As a 12th-grade teacher, I must infuse those executive-functioning skills into daily conversations with students. I want to provide my students with the ability to think critically and recognize how to use their agency to move forward and make positive changes in their lives when faced with challenges. They will learn those skills at some point. I plan to take a step back, allow them to fail in small ways, and then partner with them to move forward with stronger life skills that enable them to soar outside the high school walls.
References
Ferlazzo, L. (2019, October 19). Student agency is ownership. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-student-agency-is-ownership/2019/10
McKibben, S. (2022, November 1). Anindya Kundu on the difference between grit and agency (and why it matters). ASCD, 80(3). https://www.ascd.org/el/articles/anindya-kundu-on-the-difference-between-grit-and-agency-and-why-it-matters
Zakrezewski, V. (2014, March 20). What's wrong with grit? Greater Good Science Center at the University of California, Berkeley. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/whats_wrong_with_grit
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