What Do I Do Next?
April 17, 2009
Our guest writer today is Thelma Lancaster, Cooking & Computer Teacher; Chief Interstices Director
This is a torrential query in computer lab. It pushes my buttons, so I have been reflecting and mulling over why it has such a powerful impact on me.
As parents, we want to help our children. When they are very young, we support every footstep, literally and figuratively. We are so engaged in the process of helping, that it is difficult to step back and evaluate what is truly “helpful.” In the computer lab, a kindergartener’s challenge is to follow logical sequential processing, moving from one step at a time to five-, six-, seven-part instructions. The help-rules posted are to first think, second look at the board at the written instructions, third ask a neighbor, and fourth ask the teacher. Time and again, the students turn immediately to me, because I am an adult and they are in the habit of mind to seek answers and validation for each step from an adult. It is my struggle too, not to immediately answer. True help is to let them continuously push the envelope of their own abilities to figure it out. By helping them at each individual step, I am robbing them of their potential to truly learn.
When teaching cooking, I also see this dependency. Rather than rassling with challenges, with the scope of an entire recipe, students just want the answer: “what do I do next?” The anxiety of confusion strips them of the joy of working out a complexity. We do them such a disservice to solve their problems, ease the path, “help.” This place of muddled search, trying different solutions, doing it yourself, is the foundation to the brilliance of humanity. Again, as parents, we want them to do it “right.” So we don’t have them wash the dishes because they won’t be clean enough. They don’t make complicated food because they might do it wrong. The power of mistakes and imperfect production as a positive learning tool is lost. Our parental feedback to their efforts too often is noticing that the dish is not clean enough, rather than celebrating their long arduous path to achievement. In six months they will have clean dishes; it is our job to support the struggle, not clean the plates.
When we validate each step a child makes, they become emotionally dependent on that input for every process. They look to others as key arbiters of their learning. Intrinsic motivation, desire to figure something out for oneself, perseverance through imperfect products and joy in independently discovering the next step: these are the true goals of helping launch a life-time learner.
This parental codex, to pull back and back and back, continues for a lifetime. The failure to launch of twenty-somethings is our legacy of “help.” When my twenty-something son asks for advice, “what should I do next,” my best response should be to support his decision-making. I must admit, advice slithers out of my mouth, even as the blood drips from trying to bite my tongue. But I am trying.
Thelma