"Learned Helplessness"

This week was eye opening and alarming.  My project-based philosophy has hit the first snag of what I am certain to be many difficulties along the way.  My wife defined it best as “learned helplessness” when I explained my dilemma to her. 

What I have discovered is a problem that is out of my control.  I can help the situation (at least I’m giving it my best attempt), but a cure is found only in a shift of culture within the system.  As Dwight Carter (follow him: @Dwight_Carter) stated in his most recent blog post, Culture Matters! (click here to see the post)

What I found this week is that students have developed a learned helplessness.  My hands-off, student-controlled learning process has become almost an overwhelming experience.  Students continue to want directions, step-by-step orders, and a predetermined path.  They want me to “just tell me what to do” because “this is too hard.” 

The “this” that I am speaking of is simply to create a project, of your choice, that conveys a message, of your choice, to an audience, of your choice, using each and every class period to grow as a learner and an advocate. 

Monday’s assignment was to research your family history to seek out a disease, disorder, or condition that has traditionally shown up in your family tree.  The remainder of the week has been seeking out information about that condition, defining an audience that may want to know more about that condition, and developing a product that can present information to that audience in an interesting way.  The one rule was that the project had to be able to be posted to the internet on our class webpage.  I spent most of my week explaining to students that visual aids such as power point and posters aren’t recommended unless they do something with them such as film their presentation, because those alone are just a recreation of a website, and it would be better for us to just send the person to the website.  There are many more fires I tried to put out, but that is one for the sake of the point. 

Back to the theme of learned helplessness.  I approached countless students with blank looks on their faces that were sitting at their desks in a frozen state.  When I asked them how I could help, or what they are doing to further their project, the replies were on par with “I have no idea what to do, I am lost, I like it better when you just tell me and I can do it and turn it in.”  They were expecting me to seek them out, put them back on track, and almost hold their hand every step of the way.

This is a learning process for me as well.  I feel well equipped to assist a student, to help them learn more about a topic, to improve upon their ideas, but by the end of the week, I felt like I was doing 30 projects per class, not helping to guide 30 projects per class. 

In the past I would get frustrated at this point and revert to old strategies of lecturing, worksheets, bookwork, and sprinkled in group activities.  But, that would lump me right in with the “learned helplessness” crowd that gives up and goes right back to the same old things that are out of date and less effective, but are easier.

My challenge to my students is to rise above these habits and take pride in the learning process.  Get rid of this learned helplessness by taking on your difficulties and attempting to solve them without the help of a step-by-step set of directions.  Learn to fail during this process, and then get right back up and fix it.  Learn to take initiative, to dream big, and ultimately learn how to learn because in the real world there won’t be that safety net that comes over to your desk to encourage you to get back to work. 

My challenge to myself is to learn how to assist my students so that I am not doing the project for them, but I am providing better assistance so that they do not lose hope.  To learn how to provide a better vision of my expectations, so that students don’t feel overwhelmed or unprepared.  And finally to identify the times when I need to take a deep breath, recognize that the helplessness has opened up the opportunity for a teachable moment, and I need to capitalize, not out of frustration, but out of joy for an opportunity to make a difference. 

My final challenge is to the entire educational system.  This scenario is not entirely the student’s fault, nor is it the teacher’s fault.  Our school systems train our students to think in one way- the way that satisfies the teacher’s guidelines or standards, not in a way that allows them to learn more and to improve.  We need to keep in mind that we are preparing our students to become our future, not to be able to repeat the strategies of the past. 

Our world is changing so rapidly that we do not know the world these students will enter when they leave us.  Our students need to be equipped with the ability to learn, adapt, and push forward, not to merely meet the requirements of today. 

Take care,

Coach Mo