{"id":221,"date":"2019-11-22T19:27:21","date_gmt":"2019-11-23T00:27:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/?p=221"},"modified":"2019-11-22T19:27:21","modified_gmt":"2019-11-23T00:27:21","slug":"to-my-students-what-i-want-for-you-part-4-from-6-11-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mrfitz.com\/blog\/to-my-students-what-i-want-for-you-part-4-from-6-11-13\/","title":{"rendered":"To My Students \u2013 What I Want For You \u2013 Part 4 (from 6-11-13)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Students,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDo your work!\u201d You hear\nit all the time. Work! Work! Work! No wonder so many students hate school. It\nmust be confusing for you students. In case you hadn\u2019t noticed, adults have a\nlot of different views about work. Work can be see as a rotten way to spend\nyour time\u2013 something you do only so you can earn money so you can enjoy the\ntime left over when you\u2019re not working. I\u2019ve heard educators find the\nword wor<\/em>k so unappealing that they say we shouldn\u2019t even use the\nword \u201cwork\u201d in the class room. We should instead focus on the word learn<\/em>.\nOn the other hand, some of my 8th grade students this year read a book\ncalled Study Is Hard Work, <\/em>and I think there is a lot of truth\nto that statement: study can<\/em> be hard work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But on the other hand,\nsome of us adults are workaholics. We obsess over work; we neglect our families\nso we can work harder; we focus our educational institutions on eventually\ngetting good work \u2013 often defined as work that will earn a lot of money so you\ncan buy stuff to enjoy when you\u2019re, once again, not<\/em> working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have sometimes asked\nmy classes if they know any adults who love their jobs. Most times, most\nstudents say no. All the adults they knew would quit their jobs if they could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So work is a paradox. We\nspend anywhere from thirteen to 24 years (or more) educating ourselves so we\ncan get a good job, we make work the focus of our lives, yet we also seem to\nhate work and live for those happy moments when we are not<\/em> working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We teachers frequently\nobserve that many students don\u2019t want to work: not on paper, or even in their\nheads. Thought is hard work, and if it\u2019s work, it\u2019s to be avoided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the other\nparadox: the more you work at anything, the easier it gets. For people who work\nhard, the things they work at eventually becomes easy, and they have to work\nless hard. In fact, the things they have worked hard at no longer seem like\nwork. To those who refuse to work, or avoid it, everything remains work to\nthem. The more you avoid work, the more everything seems like a terrible chore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I want for you to\nunderstand the need for work, and how it actually makes things easier and more\nfun in the long run. Learning to ride your bike is hard work when you are\nfalling and skinning your knees. It\u2019s impossible if you give up. If you work at\nit, it\u2019s an almost effortless glide down the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You may think I want you\nto work hard so you\u2019ll get good grades. To a certain extent, I suppose you\u2019re\nright. Good grades usually mean you\u2019re learning, and you need both good grades\nand the learning they represent to succeed at most jobs or to get into college.\nGrades say more than, \u201cI learned.\u201d They also say, \u201cI worked. I have\nperseverance. I want to succeed.\u201d Poor grades say, \u201cI don\u2019t care. I\u2019m not\ninterested in succeeding. I\u2019m not capable of working or trying. I just want to\nbe entertained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But grades aren\u2019t\neverything. I want you to worry less about grades and more about learning.\nGrades inspire a point of view that school is an exercise in jumping through\nhoops and passing tests for someone else. Grades and test scores are a \u201cbottom\nline\u201d way of looking at school. I\u2019d rather you got a C you really worked for, a\nC that made you grow intellectually, than an A that demanded nothing of you and\ntaught you nothing. I want you to understand that you learn for you<\/em>.\nNot for your teachers. Not for your parents. I want you to understand that\nlearning is its own reward\u2013 if you are interested in things, as I\u2019ve suggested\nin another of these posts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve made work into a\ndirty word. It shouldn\u2019t have to be. Because there\u2019s a secret hiding in plain\nsight that we don\u2019t talk to you about very often.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The secret is\nthis: work can be fun<\/em>. (And fun can be work, as well.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A guy named Mihaly\nCsikszentmihalyi has, for decades, been studying what makes people happy (a\ntask that has been, I suspect, both hard work and really, really fun). Here\u2019s\nwhat he found: doing nothing, goofing off, isn\u2019t what makes people happy and\nengaged. He claims that people all over the world report being happiest and\nmost engaged when they are doing something, and that that something is often work<\/em>.\nHe claims people are happiest when engaged in a state he calls Flow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Flow experience is one\nwhere you are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n