I Wish I Had Your Talent

What does that talented kid feel when he is told how lucky he is? Lucky, you hope.

For the longest time, I bought into the concept of talent that people's reaction to it would seem to imply: it's like a bonus layer of ability, wrapped around an otherwise normal person - the gift-wrap. Unearned, it is a key to success that some win, some don't - lottery style. It is a reason to overlook a student's struggles - "she'll be fine, she is a real talent. Lucky girl."

But I wonder how often is the exceptional ability, when viewed from just a slightly different angle, also an impediment?

As a kid, I felt as though my head was crammed full of pictures to the point of bursting. I released the pressure by letting the colour flow out my fingers. Letters & characters were compelling shapes but I struggled to relate them to words. I was placed in a remedial reading group in grade 2. I remember hearing that I was a lazy learner. A few years later, I was placed in an advanced reading class - I battled through A Tale of Two Cities to prove that I had overcome my laziness.

Even after 40 years of learning to learn, auditory info remains elusive to me. As much as the words make sense in the moment that I hear them, unless I concentrate on stringing them back together in my mind, they just don't stick. I watch the news and while the faces and images cling to each other like a film-strip in my memory, the words are quickly lost, rendering the film meaningless.

Following my 3rd semester of university, I received a polite letter asking me to come and gather my things. My grades were THAT bad.

After some pleading and begging, I was given one more chance to succeed in the lecture hall. I focused my attention on those words flowing out of my prof's mouth with fresh energy (FEAR). As usual, pictures would emerge if I focused hard enough, and I started drawing them into my notes as fast as I could. Early on, this illustrative process could take many hours following the lecture but I got faster. After 2 more years, one of my profs noticed. He needed illustrations for a lab manual, and my picture-book version of his lectures made a good visual accompaniment to his laboratory teaching. All these years later, his successor still uses them.

Meanwhile, without realizing it, I was becoming a teacher - or at least, an impassioned advocate for a different kind of teaching. And I was receiving great training in the art of instructional design - a large part of what I now get paid to do. My students seem to learn from my illustrations, but I still lecture at them too much.

My main concern at this moment isn't my teaching. As I sit here typing, my 7-year-old draws beside me. Sometimes, she draws the things that a talented kid is supposed to draw: flowers, birds, rainbows - the stuff that adults recognize and praise her for. Her representations of things are remarkably good for her age. Other times, she sits alone, totally engrossed. The colour that flows from her fingers is abstract and frenzied and even more beautiful in its way. Her teachers have told me that she is a bright, talented kid. She gets great marks on her art.

In a recent parent-teacher interview, we were informed that our daughter is a bit lazy when it comes to her reading and math. As the teacher made this comment, I looked into my child's eyes and saw defiance and confusion.

I felt a little sad for the struggle she is facing, but I know that she's a lucky girl.

Certainty is overrated.

[In response to the idea, posted in another teacher's blog, that "science teaches us how to question"]

I'm a little affronted by the assertion that science teaches us how to question. I don't mean to be rude or disrespectful, but my fear about the plight of science education makes me short-tempered. If the "natural skill" - and I absolutely agree that it is NATURAL in the truest, most innate sense - of questioning disappears, then it is because it is schooled out of us. Science classes don't teach us how to question any more than they teach us how to breath. We educate our students to question less - to follow without question, and to depend on us for answers. It is the time-honoured way to wrest control out of students hands. The fact that students don't care to question, or don't think to, is the most disturbing evidence we have that our classrooms are broken.

Humans learn, humans question. If that innate ability that is so fundamental to our species has been deadened, teachers bare a large part of the responsibility. If through our "teaching", we must reawaken that skill, we had better start with an awareness and respect for the FACT that it is merely dormant. Too often, we supplant a student's natural inquiring instinct with some artificial structure or system - sometimes misnamed, "the scientific method". In the process, we retain the balance of power in the classroom, but we also strangle the brave creativity that is unique to each student and essential to real learning. Our goal should not be to encourage students to arrive at the same conclusions as we do, but to arrive at some completely unique destination of their own. And how does this look? It looks chaotic and disordered. It feels even worse - confusing and scary, it takes courage to learn this way. By the way, it takes courage to teach this way, and in my classroom it is more a goal than a reality, but I'm working on it.

When I begin one of my science classes, I tell students that more than anything, I want them to be WRONG. I point out how often the path to amazing science has been almost completely blind, misguided or wrong-headed. Great discoveries are made by those who don't cling to their assumptions, hold their minds open, willing to be proven WRONG. Through demonstrations, I show them how much more fun WRONG can actually be than RIGHT. RIGHT is a brief self-satisfied nod of the head and move on. WRONG is shocking, surprising and exciting, sit back and reevaluate. WRONG stays with you, while RIGHT is long forgotten. Over time, students learn that what I look for is thoughtful educated guesses, even sudden rash insights. I don't want them to hold their tongue until they are certain.

Certainty is overrated.