Zone of Proximal Emotional Growth

I am spending the year with my children in Sikkim, India.  We have only been here for three weeks, and from the moment we stepped off the plane in Delhi, I have found myself often asking, "why am I putting my kids (and myself) through this?" Grace and Corrina are very clearly way outside their comfort zone, to the point of tears sometimes, and I find myself contemplating over and over, is this the kind of pain they should be rescued from or is this the kind of pain required for growth?  The difference is not always clear to me and I struggle as a parent to know the difference.

I have found the same to be true in my teaching and administrative roles as well.  When are the moments that the student needs to feel the pain of a hard grade, or a harsh word, and when is it too much? How do we support students to stretch their notion of their own comfort zones, which can allow them to take growth-creating and healthy risks?

One of my colleagues here, someone I knew while in America, wrote me an email related to this subject:

     "Once, I was talking to J., he was saying that the Head of School was not interested in an exchange with Taktse because of the assymetrical nature of the relationship. In other words, Taktse kids would get so much from the school but what would the American kids possibly gain from Taktse? 

     "It made me so sad to hear that. I think that attitude is part of why our country is in so much trouble. I mean the main thing we, as Americans, have to gain from stepping out of our comfort zone is understanding how people in the rest of the world think and live and feel, the stresses they are under, the jealousies, prides and inadequacies they feel, what it's like for immigrants in our own country, etc etc. When I was in Beverly,  I heard a show on student exchange programs where they said that fewer and fewer programs really demand that kids step into an alien world. Evidently, more and more foreign exchange programs plan for students to be with other American kids, speaking English, staying in American-style places and eating familiar food so they can… have more fun. That is the goal: provide  fun and make some money for the university! That is what I mean by our country being in trouble. Personally, I love having fun but to hold that as the goal of an exchange--to not even recognize what a luxury it is--seems, well, ridiculous."

It is not clear to me that fun pushes emotional growth.  If we focus on fun in these types of moments -- where does that leave our students?  When we don't take the time to calculate and then push their zones of emotional growth, aren't we potentially limiting them? The fact is, students don't need Outward Bound to experience such opportunities.  If we could see moments in every day, in every classroom, as possible moments for growth, it could be incorporated into our way of teaching and could allow for maximal growth.

No Cheating

Fear is an unpredictable motivator.

I have been given the task at Taktse to edit and update the student/parent handbook. As I was reading through it I noticed that there was not a single section in the book addressing the act of cheating.  There was a vague reference to the expectation that all students be honest with their work, but in all the other handbooks I have ever worked on the section on cheating thoroughly detailed all the ways a student might cheat, the school's significant disapproval regarding cheating and the carefully delineated ways a cheating incident would be handled in the disciplinary process.

What are American kids afraid of that lead them to cheat? What are Sikkimese kids afraid of that lead them not to cheat?

I asked the person in charge of the handbook about the lack of reference to cheating and she responded fairly nonchalantly that there were probably cases and yes it would be worth putting in the handbook. At another time, a female student told us that her sister had offered to do her homework for her but she wouldn't "feel right" handing in and taking credit for work that someone else had done. She would feel ashamed if she got caught and wouldn't be able to lie about it.

In America, kids want to "get ahead" so badly they will risk a lot to do so. Many times they care less about actually learning than they do about getting good grades. Carol Dweck has shown that kids work best when they are complimented for working hard instead of being smart.  The American kids I have worked with are told by their parents that if they just work hard they will get good grades.  Well, school isn't actually like that. So what options are they left with? Copying homework and plagiarizing are ways to 1) look like they worked hard and 2) get a good grade, especially when they have a lot of other work to do or they are afraid that working hard won't automatically lead to good grades.  What I want to know is what happened to feeling ashamed or afraid as an inhibitors to cheating for American students?