Okay, this is a story that requires a little bit of set up and I am not certain where to start. I’m starting with “Timmy.” Timmy is not this kid’s name, but frankly, it really should be. He looks like a Timmy. Timmy is recently thirteen years old. That means that he is mostly still twelve. Now, Timmy is in his second year of middle school, which means that much of what he has encountered this year, he has encountered before. That’s called “vertical alignment” in my state. It’s probably called that everywhere, but every now and then I find out that my state does things that makes other states go “What the faaa….”

Here is the skill we are working on: students are supposed to read and then annotate a short story (twelve paragraphs), for the purpose of being able to break it into parts. His first question to me was “We have to read ALL this?!”

Yes.

“And annotate it?!”

Yes. Just like we did together for the last story. And the story before that. We have done this exercise together twice. If you look at your notes, you will see the notes we took together as a class, discussing as we went along.

“I didn’t do that! I didn’t know we had to do it!”

So when I said that I wanted you to copy the notes EXACTLY AS WE WERE WRITING THEM TOGETHER, so you could use them as reference to do it yourself, you thought that…?

“I don’t know what to write!”

Can you use your table partner’s notes for this, and copy them into your packet while you are at it?

“But that’s SO MUCH!” (It wasn’t.) “How am I supposed to do ALL that?!”

I am going to pause Timmy’s tale here to take us to a different place. My oldest friend, who has guided me through some of the most difficult days of my life, gave me a piece of advice once that I turn to all the time. ALL. THE. TIME. She told me once that it is important, if you are teaching people to do things, to spend some amount of time learning to do something that you are not comfortable or confident with. As a result of this, she – a data scientist – has taken classes in watercolor, welding, glass blowing, pickle ball, Thai cooking, all sorts of stuff. She said that she does this so she can always put herself in the shoes of someone who is uncomfortable with what seems very simple to her.

I volunteer with an organization that gave me a name-tag that says that I speak Spanish. I feel it is arguable that I could speak Spanish. I used to speak Spanish. I can read in Spanish. I can sing bunches of Bad Bunny songs (not all of them, that guy speaks SO FAST). I can write in Spanish. But a lack of practice means that I am what linguists call “receptively bilingual.” When in a position to produce words, sentences, thoughts, instructions, or directions to anywhere other than the door, bathroom, kitchen, or library, my abilities tip their hat take off, leaving me stuttering, and falling back on that ever impressive “uhhhh…” or worse still “soooo….” It’s awful. Today, while volunteering, I was ruminating on Timmy. His crash out at school on Friday was Oscar worthy. He threw down his pencil, he knocked over his chair, he pushed his papers off of his desk dramatically, he actually stood up, put his fingers in his hair and jumped up and down like Rumplestiltskin when the princess said his name.

I looked at my own discomfort with my frustration at my inability to communicate with the first eighteen people I encountered. Usually, after a little while, my a rudimentary version of my Spanish abilities will make an appearance and do it’s best to help me out. However, until it deigns to do so, I feel the hotness of embarrassment about doing badly at something I think I should be able to do well. I feel the churning bubbles of pressure, like a shaken soda bottle, making the inside of my body feel like there isn’t enough space for air. I even feel that discomfort in my nose. It feels like having something stuck in my nostril that everyone can see, but addressing it publicly is out of the question. In short, Timmy’s response suddenly seemed appealing, if not rational. I wanted to hide under the cart in front of me.

None of this is going to solve Timmy’s problems. He hates working. He dislikes things that aren’t easy or obvious at first glance. He wants his peers to see him as effortlessly smart, and also cool. He doesn’t like language arts. At all. He says it’s boring. (He’s boring!) Nevertheless, the feelings that come with being uncomfortable with the process of building new skills are real, valid, and sometimes not easily controlled.

What would your advice to Timmy be? My own practices – deep breaths, radical self acceptance, trusting the process of learning, and recommitting to practicing what I need to practice to improve – are not going to land well on his pointy little head. So, what would you tell him to do? I am not a fan of the “I Can’t Do It” performance art that he does to show his frustration. But I also know “It will get easier the more you do it” is the kind of condescending brush-off that people who think something is easy always use when confronted by someone else’s struggle with it. It doesn’t matter that it is true. It isn’t helpful.

So look back at your thirteen year old self. What did that kid need to hear for you to be where you are today?