Learning and struggle

I am not stranger to private lessons. I have taught via private lessons for many years... piano, horseback riding, even knitting. My children have taken a wide variety of private lessons over the years as have I. I still take weekly riding lessons. My personal opinion is that if you are teaching anyone anything, you should also be in the process of learning something new yourself. Learning can be a humbling experience and a teacher needs to constantly have that feeling in the forefront of their mind by experiencing it first hand. This aspect of teaching and learning is not what I want to focus on tonight, though.

My riding lesson was yesterday. On the face of it, it wasn't a fantastic lesson. I couldn't find my balance on the horse I was riding and was displeased with my performance. I ask a lot of questions during my lesson, especially if I feel as though I am not riding as well as I would like. Because of this, by the end of the lesson I had sorted out what my problem was and was able to fix it. The last bit of the lesson went much, much better the all the rest of it. 

Now, what is the thing we all ask our children afterwards? How was your lesson? Right? As I walked back to the car afterwards, I was thinking about this question. Did I have a good lesson? What do we mean by that? Usually I think we mean did the student perform successfully, so everything right, sit quietly and listen and do what is asked? I admit that this was my definition of a "good" lesson for many years, but is it really?

My experience of learning different things as an adult would suggest that the most valuable learning comes from failure and struggle. I then bring that failure and struggle to a teacher who is farther along the path than I and together we sort out where the difficulties lie. It is a partnership. It is also a messy process. I love it when I leave a lesson feeling as though I performed well, because that feels good. If I am honest, I learn far more from messy, ugly lessons where I do not feel successful, but have struggled to figure out why. 

I suggest we lose the idea of asking if someone had a good lesson, and I'm including myself here. A far better question, and one that puts the focus back on learning instead of performance, would be, w

"What did you learn?" Or another way to look at it, normalizing failure and struggle as part of the learning process could be, "What did you struggle with?" or "Did you ask good questions today?" 

This has been the lens through which I am currently helping my own students see their learning process, but it is so far reversed from our typical performance outlook that it can be difficult for the student to wrap their head around. It is a hard sell. It only starts to make sense when I point out that if they could do everything right without struggle, there would be no point in taking lessons in the first place. It is difficult to overcome the lessons as performance mindset., though.