Comfort zones

One of the reasons I began writing this blog is to force myself out of my comfort zone.  I'm an avid reader and always have been.  I am comfortable with a book in hand, but I have never felt comfortable writing which I explained in an earlier post, I Hate Writing.

Recently I read a book about teaching writing that mentioned  - if teachers are going to teach writing then they should be writers themselves.  Not published writers per se, but people who are comfortable putting words on paper. So here I am writing!

My goal is to write every day, just like I have my students do, and with few exceptions I have met that goal.   Some days I write a lot and other days just a few sentences.  For a variety of reasons, I don't post everything I write.  I have deleted quite a few entries that never made it to the public, but boy did it feel good to write them!  Then there are those entries that have remained in the draft stage because they require more thought.

Writing every day has been surprisingly easier than I thought it would be.  The experience of putting my thoughts onto paper (or typing them on a screen?) has been very therapeutic and enlightening.  I've discovered that writing about my class allows me to see my class from a different perspective.  Focusing on the words I am writing frees up the problem solving area of my brain to do some creative thinking.  It's similar to my days as a math major.  I would get stuck on a particular problem for hours and it was while I was asleep that I would figure out how to solve it - as soon as I stopped consciously thinking about it.

Lev Vygotsky, a famous psychologist developed the concept called "the zone of proximal development."  This describes the range of tasks that are too difficult for children to complete on their own but with scaffolding from an adult, the child can learn how to complete the task.  Students won't grow and develop unless they venture past their comfort zone and neither will teachers.