Hard Fun
“70% percent of children drop out of sports by their early teens. Why? Recent studies show it’s often because playing sports has ceased to be fun.”
This report is essentially critical of
coaches who over drill children and treat sport as a must win activity. This of
course ‘kills’ motivation for many of our young people. The report goes on to
say, “A good youth coach ensures that every practice, every competition, every
communication is focused on all of the athletes having a positive and enjoyable
experience. Youth sport should be about having fun while learning to work hard
for a common goal, to prioritise developing skills over winning, to persist in
the face of adversity, to be a good sport, and to be competitive. If all
coaches got the proper training and supervision, many more kids would continue
playing sports throughout their teens.” (1)
The reality is, this is the same for any learning.
Sadly, many children are turned off school when it is repetitive, pitched to the middle of the class, drill orientated and boring.
The
best education is ‘hard fun’---we all learn better when there is
a bit of tension and stretch combined with enjoyment. This fits so well with
the important concept of ‘learner agency’ where the aim is support learners
incrementally to take more control over their learning. “When learners move from being passive
recipients to being much more active in the learning process, actively involved
in the decisions about the learning, then they have greater agency.” ( Core
Education: http://www.core-ed.org/thought-leadership/ten-trends/ten-trends-2014/learning-agency )
Personalising
learning (giving learners more ‘choice’ and ‘voice’) as much as possible is a
powerful way of connecting students’ passions and interests (hard fun) which of
course will help drive their learning.
This
isn’t some woolly notion. It has to have rigour and struggle running through
it. I know it is a bit of a cliché but
‘no pain, no gain’. As you know this applies to all of us and we would be doing
our students a disservice if we didn’t foster resilience in them.
As
teachers we must have high expectations for our students and communicate these
to them. This should be done in a positive fashion inviting and expecting
students to be active in their learning
and to be able to reflect on their efforts and talk about it. Making learning
goals shared and explicit to students gives the learner a sense of ownership
which of course is very motivational.
Praise
and feedback is central to levering the best from the students. Some students
will metaphorically need their ‘hand held’ more than others until they have the
confidence and skills to ‘walk alone’. The need for this scaffolding and
example prompts will vary enormously across any one class.
The
concept of ‘learner agency’ is huge, complex and powerful in the learning
process. Best practice here transforms children’s learning and is central to
this idea of ‘hard fun’. In time students will become more confident and active
in their learning. This intrinsic engagement / motivation creates powerful and
deep learning.
(1 ( “Our Kids’ Coaches Are Doing It Wrong” by
Jennifer Etnier in The New York Times,
March 12, 2020 (reported in Linda Braun’s Hippocampus, April 7th
2020)
