Keep Throwing Darts at the Dartboard

I recently viewed the A Plus condensed version of Will Ferrell’s commencement address to the graduating class of 2017 at USC.

Ferrell’s charge to “keep throwing darts at the dartboard” resonates deeply with me.  This has been a challenging year, maybe the most challenging of my 16 years as a middle school science teacher.  I accepted a position at a new school in a new district.  I had three preps, none of which I had taught before, and I moved classrooms 4 times throughout the day (although this movement helped me gain a much better appreciation of how our students feel during their school days).  This year was hard.  It pushed me way outside of my comfort zone.  It was a year of steep, steep learning.  It was frustrating at times but it was also rewarding.

I love teaching.  My passion is to create learning opportunities and environments where kids push their thinking, find and develop their strengths, are creative, think critically and discover and develop new ideas and understandings.  Creating this environment though is a messy process and requires constant revision and reflection, problem solving and risk taking.  The bullseye on my

dartboard is student understanding. Here’s the thing though; the bullseye is on the move, it’s always changing, it’s constantly getting tweaked and sometimes it gets completely revised.  The bullseye on my dartboard looks different with every new group of learners in August.  It is modified with every new learning objective that we are working towards.  It is adjusted based on the needs of every learner that walks through our classroom door.  The bullseye on my dartboard must be tweaked every day depending on what happened to each learner earlier that day, the night before, last month or years before.

Every time I throw a new dart at my dartboard, I aim for the bullseye but I know I’ll never quite get there.  If I think I have, it’s probably time to do something else because I’ve lost sight of my target.  This is what makes teaching exciting and rewarding but hard.  This moving bullseye gives me the push to take risks and try new things. This year I threw lots of darts.  I completely missed a few times, especially in those first few months of the new year.  But I also think that I threw some darts that were pretty darn close to hitting their mark. Through all of this dart throwing, my student learners amazed me.  They were creators, they were problem solvers, they were risk takers, they were thinkers, they were learners.

I learned as much from my misses this year as I did from those darts that were creeping up on the bullseye.  As I close out my first year in my new school, I look forward to reflecting on what my student learners taught me this year.  I look forward to taking my learnings from this challenging year and recalibrating my aim for next year’s darts.  I look forward to the next school year when I will continue to ‘keep throwing darts at the dartboard”.

Photo Credits: Dartboard, Dartboard with Darts

Status Quo

Recently, my daughter had to make an important decision. She had to decide if she wanted to maintain status quo. Would she stay with what was comfortable and easy, but overall incredibly unsatisfying or step outside of her comfort zone and do something different, something uncomfortable, something scary, but something that was ripe with opportunity and potential.

I am proud to say that she went for the latter choice. It’s easy to stay safe, it’s easy to encourage the safe choice. After all, if it’s safe, as a parent we know what to expect, as an individual, things become more predictable, life gets easier. But life shouldn’t be about predictability, it should be rich and exciting and satisfying. Our experiences should push us as human beings, they should stretch our comfort zones and our minds. Experiences should expose us to new things, different ways of thinking, new people, new ideas. Safe is boring, safe rarely helps us grow and become better stewards of our communities, our amazing planet and ultimately our families and ourselves.

Over and over again in my school, I see safe choices. Maybe it’s a student that is good at school, always following the directions, staying with the lines, aiming for the right grade rather than the learning. Maybe it’s a teammate that hangs back and watches everyone else manipulate an idea, a new design, a question, an experiment, only stepping in when he is one hundred percent sure that he has it covered. Maybe it’s a teacher that sticks to what he knows, what he is comfortable with and what has successfully worked for him in the past even though it’s not working anymore. Maybe it’s an administrator that doesn’t want to rock the boat by encouraging her teachers to think differently.

I’ve never been what I would call a safe person. I certainly take more than my share of risks. You might not look at me or talk to me for the first time and think this, but I do. I like to say that I embrace, welcome and often times look for change. Many of my risks, my “jumping of the cliff” moments have occurred within the confines of my own classroom. Some have led to great things, some have led to massive failures. Despite the risks that I have taken within my classroom, I have also played it safe at the same time. I have taught in the same school for 15 years. I have taught the same subject and grade for 15 years. I have always justified this stagnation because I love what I do. But lately, it hasn’t been quite enough. I’m still challenged every day, but something is missing. My daughter provided me with great inspiration. I too have a potential opportunity to do something different within the confines of what I love to do, help kids learn. This opportunity would require me to step far outside of my comfort zone. It will be hard. I will have to leave the community that I has supported my growth and the development of my craft over the last 15 years. But change is good, risk is good, being a little bit uncomfortable is good for the mind, body and spirit.

Thank you Sage, for reminding me that the human spirit thrives under conditions of change.