In life we are
constantly being shoved into uncomfortable situations and we immediately run
for the nearest shade of comfort that we can find, and we bask in the warmth of
its womb-like familiarity. What if I told you that you were doing it wrong. For
many of us, this will be our first time standing in front of a class full of
teenaged students, teaching our lessons that we so elegantly scribbled with our
own blood. Uncomfortable? You bet. But I have recently come upon a new saying
that I have been constantly reminding myself of, “Embrace discomfort if you
want to get better”. Yes, I’m saying that we need to accept our nervousness and
give it a great big hug.
The quote comes from this
article, written by Henriette Lazaridis Power, which has become something I
have read 4 times in the past week. To sum it up, Power says that we need to
stop making excuses as to why we don’t put all our effort into one thing,
because when it boils down, we are too scared to fail. To connect it to our own
learning, don’t we constantly say that learning takes place when students take
risks. Well how are we going to get any better at teaching or lesson planning
if we don’t just jump in with guns blazing. I know personally when I think back
to this saying of embrace discomfort, I feel inspired to put everything I have
into whatever I’m working on, because how can I expect my students to take
risks if I’m unwilling to.
I think it was in my education psych class that the professor mentioned something similar to this. I was called something like "Disequilibrium". I think the point was that anything new is going to be uncomfortable but it was only in that state of uncomfortable, that struggle to adapt that you learn. Being uncomfortable gives you this strong will to want to change and only through disequilibrium will you have that opportunity to embrace the new and bring it over to your normal state of being.
ReplyDeleteMy personal experiences with being uncomfortable have taught me that, even though I can't turn off the uncomfortableness (not a word), I know that after about 2 minutes, I'll feel fine and continue on. When I taught my first lesson, I was nervous for about 30 seconds before I started to feel comfortable and used to being stared at by 15 students and then it became fun and I interacted freely with them. When I taught my second lesson, I wasn't nervous at all because I had already gotten past that feeling. In some way, the feeling you get after being nervous is worth being nervous because it's rewarding and once again, fun!
ReplyDelete