Discomfort Zones
Just last week, after a workshop I ran on managing anxiety during COVID, a wise teacher said to me,
“One word that came to mind to sum up what we are going through and are going to have to deal with is opportunity.”
Thank you,
wise teacher.
(You know who you are!)
Aside from exposing numerous beneficial ways education itself could reform — supporting teachers in cleaving to the bare bones, for example, or helping teachers take control of what matters, or focusing teachers unswervingly on student-centered teaching — COVID offers teachers an opportunity to do what they’d like students to do:
venture into their discomfort zones.
What do I mean by discomfort zones? I mean the stuff you don’t know. The things you’re not good at. The territory that is scary and unfamiliar, squishy and boggy. For many teachers (definitely for me), one discomfort zone is — you guessed it — online teaching.
Venturing into these zones means
embracing struggle.
Not overwhelming struggle, like trying to make sense of parents who fight violently or learning to live with chronic hunger. I mean the struggle that is inherent in growth and learning, in change. The kind of struggle Vygotsky meant by the zone of proximal development. (Hunh! He was thinking spatially, too.) Where you move from your comfort zone into a discomfort zone and then, through learning, out again into a new way of being and feeling comfortable.
What can I say about discomfort zones?
They normalize discomfort in learning. No need to shy away from it. Rather, perhaps, lean into it.
They imply that comfort is an option. If you’re uncomfortable, how might you shift in your seat?
They imply borders. A zone has a beginning and end. And sides. Where are those parameters? For you? For your students? How or where does your (or your students’) comfort transition into discomfort? And back again?
They imply movement. Taking a step. And then another. Laying down boards or bricks or tracks as you go. What’s the first step you’re willing to take? For yourself? With your students?
They invite company. Who wants to venture out into a bog alone? (Other than some frustrating detective in a British murder mystery.) Figure out what help is needed and get it.
They imply growth. Non-colonizing expansion. Wider vistas of knowledge and capacity, confidence and trust. Healthy risk can do that.
They require imagination. Because you can’t see reliably through the mess of discomfort, you’ve really got to have faith (and be strategic) (and creative).
They invite you and your students to frolic. To laugh in the face of danger. (“Danger” being discomfort zones, not COVID hot spots, for example.)
So: How can we teachers
milk this opportunity?
Mantra: Take a step. Phew! Then take another step.