What are the things you like to do?
The things you find yourself consistently doing.
Now times those things by 365 days of the year that you do them (give or take)
And multiply that by how many years you want to live.
Question- are you happy with the person you’ve become after all that multiplying?
They are the ones that matter, and we know this.
We know that great things come from culminative efforts.
We know that in order to eat an elephant you take one bite at a time.
We know that nothing great was built by changing everything at once and doing everything in one day (or even a week).
The truth (that we know) is that it’s the little things, done over and over again that get you there.
The choice, then, is to select the right little things to get you there.
Reading an inspirational quote each day mightn’t help you write your book…
…but writing a sentence each day might.
Choose the little thing and one day you’ll get the big thing.
You want to teach more te reo in your class but you find yourself stuck on ‘kei te pēhea koe’. You decide you need to upskill! You find a te reo night class- great! You dedicate a couple of hours a night to learning the language and even manage to create some lesson plans for your students.
As teachers, we all want to be well informed. We want to have all the facts. We want to bring a level of expertise to the table so we can stand with confidence in front of our class, field any questions and extend the learning together in the uniquely alive environment of a classroom full of curious kids.
We want to be the experts in the room.
Don’t we all?
I mean surely we have to know everything about a subject before we teach it…right?
The truth is, expertise in any field is hard to define, time consuming to attain and just when you think you get ‘there’ there’s even more to learn.
It’s the beautiful thing about learning, but it’s a trap for teachers.
The real magic in teaching comes from releasing the need to be an expert. The most powerful educators I’ve seen in action weren’t experts, they were outstanding facilitators.
This need for expertise is even more rampant in New Zealand primary schools when it comes to te ao Māori. And trust me, I get it. To say the Māori people and language has been through a lot the last couple of centuries is an understatement. So this need to ‘get it exactly right’ makes complete sense. Teachers want to respect the Māori culture. They want to do right by our heritage and they definitely do not want to disrespect the culture.
Sometimes this prompts personal learning journeys for teachers; they deeply explore the language, the culture and their own relationship to it as a New Zealander.
Other times it creates a paralysis in teachers. They don’t have the time or the resources to become proficient in the language or reach a level where they would be comfortable to pass it onto their students.
While it appears that this is respect in action, it actually has the opposite effect. When we are afraid of getting it wrong as teachers, we pass down this fear to our students. They inherit this fear, the culture doesn’t get passed on and we create a whole new generation of people who do not claim or celebrate te ao Māori as our unique national asset.
I think we instinctively realise that we can’t know it all before we dive into something. We’d be stuck with most things if this were the case. We have to make do with what we have, right? Can you think of a time where you taught something without needing all the answers?
I certainly can…
When I was fresh out of drama school, I found myself teaching a night class for non-actors. I was 23 and felt out of my depth. I had to teach adults (some of whom were 20 years older than me) how to act.
Keep in mind, I had just graduated and after the whirlwind three years I actually felt more confused about acting than when I started. I didn’t feel like I knew nearly enough to teach a weekly two hour night class to 30 people!
I think the secret fear I had was that I would have to demonstrate ‘great’ acting and that just made me want to vomit. “I’m just as confused as you all are!” is all I wanted to shout.
It was my mentor that gave me the advice I’m giving you now. He told me I didn’t need to know it all. He told me I just had to hold space for the learning to happen.
Whoa. That’s good. “Hold space for learning to happen” …
“Well I can do that” I thought.
I gathered some of the exercises from acting school that interested me most and took them along to my first class.
He told me I didn’t need to know it all. He told me I just had to hold space for the learning to happen.
With my fresh perspective, I positioned myself as the one who brought the proverbial soccer ball and goal nets.
“I’m not the best in the world, but hey here’s the equipment we need to learn together”
I taught that class for a year and we had an outstanding experience. My ‘students’ grew not because I’m so great, but because I facilitated space for us all to try things out together.
Now I wasn’t ‘winging’ it. I knew our outcomes and had some ideas I wanted us to explore together. But I also didn’t pour hours into late night googling to have impressive facts to sound smart.
I just made a space in which excellent learning could take place; and last I checked us teachers are really good at that.
This is the same strategy I see in the most successful teachers we work with at Online Kapa Haka, they aren’t the teachers who know the most, they are the ones who let go of that need and pour all their effort into facilitating world class learning environments.
While the biggest part of implementing this is a perspective shift, here are a few practical steps you can do now to get the benefits immediately:
Step 1: Decide. Decide to release the need to be an expert.
Step 2: Clarify. Have a clearly defined question or outcome going into the class; What will we all learn together?
Step 3: Resource. Gather as much resource as you can to explore together with your students- not to cram before the lesson, but to use together.
Step 4: Environment. Create an environment conducive to trying things out. Ask your students what you can all expect of each other and how you all should behave in pursuit of that.
Step 5: Explore. With curiosity, explore the resources together and find the learning outcome together live in the room
If this feels uncomfortable to you, you’re not alone. Looking at this as a lesson plan makes me squirm a little bit too. What could look like a lack of preparation is actually yielding to the life of the classroom. Just like an actor shouldn’t over-prepare for a scene, so too should a teacher avoid killing the magic of learning by overcooking the lesson prep. The learning happens live in the room, not on the computer screen the night before.
You might also be thinking “Great, well where do I find the right resources?!”
In most cases it isn’t a lack of resource that trips teachers up but a lack of resourcefulness. Get more interested in the intention of your lesson and the environment you create and let that steer you to find resources that ignite those lessons.
The next time you feel that niggling feeling like you need to know more, remember that you only need to provide the tools and environment for learning to take place. Focus on being a world class facilitator, someone who makes magical and lively learning happen daily; because you’re already an expert at that.
It’s not what you get it’s who you become.
It’s nearing the end of March which means we’re a good chunk through the year now. That also means it’s a good time to re-look at those goals you set over new years.
Goals can get us trapped in the idea that we have to ‘get’ a ‘thing’.
Get a deadline, a certain amount of money or some status symbol…
What I’m being reminded of this time around is that the ‘thing’ you get in pursuit isn’t even the real prize.
What really matters is who you become.
You don’t really want to win the Oscar- you want to become the type of actor who could win the Oscar.
You don’t want to run the marathon, but become the person that can.
The accolade or the toy isn’t the thing, but who you become is.
Set the goal, sure. But know the real prize.
Do you follow rules that no longer matter?
Last year I set a goal for myself to act every day- and the way I did that was by daily making a little video and posting it.
And I did it. Yay!
But the interesting thing was, somewhere along the way I disconnected from the actual outcome.
I set myself the ‘rule’ that I had to post something every day. And so I stuck to that rule religiously.
But in so doing, I lost sight of what I really wanted to be doing: creating something of value that I loved and that other people could love to.
So instead of noticing that and shifting my approach, I stuck to the rule.
So I’m very mindful now of getting rid of that which no longer serves me.
Am I following this rule because I’m too stubborn to change?
Or is it still taking me where I want to go?
Don’t continue to do something just because you said you would…
Each day you learn more and get closer to knowing what it actually is that you want.
And your previous decisions and commitments may not serve the updated picture.
Don’t be stubborn. Be flexible.
Sometimes we need a giant change…
And sometimes we need a little tweak.
(More often that not it’s the little tweak)
Before the giant change…
Make a few little tweaks.
And then some more little tweaks.
You’ll probably be fine with just those.
And you’ll probably experience giant change
From the little tweaks.
An uncomfortable question to ask yourself: Where does this lead?
It’s pretty pointy. And it can elicit some pretty uncomfortable truths. We can ask this question in all aspects of our lives and get some useful feedback.
Maybe you find yourself flying by the seat of your pants at work, never really putting in the preemptive work to be really great at what you do. You find you can ‘get by’ pretty well this way, no one notices and your work is ‘good enough’.
Where does this lead?
We can fall into the trap of thinking that ‘one day’ we’ll do better, but really what’s better than deferring to ‘one day’ is focussing on ‘day one’- and that brings us right to today.
Asking “where does this lead” forces us to face what is all to easy to ignore.
The next question of course is, where do I want to go? and what if this was ‘day one’ on the journey there?
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Isn’t it a wonderful trick of the universe that growth requires resistance?
For a muscle to grow, it needs to meet something that is too heavy.
As teachers, the hardest days are the ones that form us.
As actors, the hardest audiences make us the strongest.
It’s easy to say this, of course. But it really counts when you’re in it. And if you’re in it. Know that you are growing.
Do you fall into this trap too?
I love learning new things.
But sometimes I feel like I have an insatiable appetite for new information. The problem with that is things can remain surface level.
I’m recently enjoying revisiting things. The book you read 6 years ago is kind of a different book when you, as you are now, read it again.
A simple foundational exercise has oceans more to be learned when we come back to it again years after the first time.
More is not always more. More with the same thing, on the other hand. Well yes, that is probably more.
The thing doesn’t change. But you do, so the thing is different too.
Do you fall into this trap too?
I love learning new things.
Sometimes I feel like I have an insatiable appetite for new information that I can apply to my life and work. The problem with that is things can remain surface level.
I’m recently enjoying revisiting things. The book you read 6 years ago is kind of a different book when you, as you are now, read it.
A simple foundational exercise has oceans more to be learned when we come back to it again and again years after the first time.
More is not always more. More with the same thing, on the other hand. Well yes, that is probably more.
