Hitting The Proverbial Wall
Who hasn’t had this frustration at one time or another? You are sitting in traffic and watching the cars in the next lane go by, but when you switch lanes, suddenly your new lane is stopped and now the lane you just left is the one moving faster? It feels like no matter which lane you are in, yours is the one moving more slowly. Logically, we know that the other lane can’t be faster all the time, but when we are sitting in traffic, watching the minutes on the clock slip by, and wondering if we should try switching lanes one more time, it sure feels like it.
The truth is, the other lane isn’t always faster. The reason that it seems like it does is that when your lane is moving, your eyes are on the road ahead and you don’t have time to watch the cars in the other lane slowly fall behind. It is only when we are stopped and frustrated that we notice how fast others are going in relation to ourselves.
So, how does this traffic analogy apply to education?
All too often as a teacher of young violinists, I see students who have been blazing along, as if learning to play the violin was the easiest thing in the world, suddenly hit a wall. Some of these are students who learned a new piece every other week for a full year and then suddenly find themselves laboring over a single piece for months on end. I see the frustration, and often the tears, building up in my students’ eyes as they struggle to comprehend why everything is suddenly so much harder, and I see the distrust in their gazes as I tell them that everyone goes through this and they are not alone.
Just as nearly every car driver can recall sitting in traffic and noticing the other lane pass them, nearly every young student, violinist or otherwise, can recall watching their peers sail ahead as they themselves struggle and flounder. However, when pressed, they often cannot recall a time when they noticed another student falling behind while they flourished. Just like the driver sitting in traffic, other students are not actually always moving faster. All students progress at different rates at different times. They only start to become preoccupied with each other’s progress when they are dissatisfied with their own.
Why is this an issue?
For many students who hit a wall in their development, it can feel like an insurmountable obstacle. They have never struggled like this before, so they believe that they are failing. Some students internalize this feeling as self-doubt and inferiority complexes; others externalize their frustrations as feelings of persecution by their teachers, their peers, or the educational system. For students who internalize, a belief that they are no longer capable of learning can put up mental blocks which further inhibit learning. Students who externalize can put up mental blocks too, between themselves and those who might be able to help them. If they feel that the teacher is no longer on their side, they may not be receptive to learning from them anymore. In either case, the mental blocks the student puts up in response to their educational struggles can often be more debilitating than the educational struggles themselves. It is therefore imperative to break down these mental blocks so that the student can push through the struggle and rise above it to new heights.
Why does everyone hit a wall?
In chemistry, when you heat a solid to a liquid, or a liquid to a gas, the temperature rises up to the melting point, or evaporating point, where it plateaus until the change of state is complete and then the temperature starts to rise again. During these plateaus, all the energy is used up in rearranging molecules, so there is none left for increasing temperature. When the molecules are done rearranging, that energy is once again devoted to increasing temperature. Developmental “walls” serve a similar function to those plateaus: progress is halted while a crucial shift in development is taking place. Students keep sailing along without much change in their learning style or approach, until they reach a point in their development at which their approach is no longer advanced enough and they must make a major adjustment in how they learn and study. While this adjustment is being made, external progress slows down.
Unfortunately, most students, and teachers and parents, tend to measure success only by external progress and do not recognize the value of slowing down to adjust educational approaches. This is why the developmental plateaus that are a necessary and unavoidable part of learning, feel like developmental walls or dead ends. This is a difficult pill to swallow for young students who are already scared and frustrated, watching their peers go by in the “fast lane”. It is the role of parents and teachers to recognize the value of these plateaus and not pressure the student or shame them for their lack of external progress, but instead build them up and praise them for their accomplishment: breaking through into a new developmental stage. That’s what these walls are: turning points to a new stage of development. They should be celebrated, not feared.
How can we help students who are struggling?
Let them know they are not alone. If students only notice how much others are excelling when they are struggling and not when others are struggling while they are excelling, they will have no perspective for when they first hit a wall. Finding out that their peers, who seems to be sailing effortlessly ahead, also hit a wall at one point and pushed through to where they are now, can be immensely beneficial to the struggling student. Furthermore, self-sharing on the part of the teacher or parent can be immensely helpful. For the most part, teachers and parents represent a finished product to young students. When students feel they have hit a wall, they sometimes believe that this is it, they will never get to the level of their teachers or parents. However, if they discover that their teachers and parents went through the same thing, they can feel reassured that hitting a wall does not preclude eventual success, in fact, it is a necessary and inevitable step towards that goal.
When disclosing our or others’ struggles, it is important to be as genuine as possible and to offer specific and convincing details. The more mental blocks a student puts up in response to their frustration and fear of failure, the harder they find it to believe what their teachers and parents try to comfort them with. Specificity of details in sharing helps reassure students of the veracity of these anecdotes. Try to relay an emotional connection to the story. Be positive about the outcome, but don’t sugarcoat the struggle. The point is for the student to believe that their proverbial wall is no more permanent than anyone else’s who came before.
Most importantly, do not be part of the problem. Teachers and parents who overemphasize external progress above overall development, penalize, however unintentionally, the developmental plateaus that are crucial for further progress. I have had parents complain to me, right in front of their struggling vulnerable children, that their kid isn’t progressing. What kind of message is this sending to a child who feels like they are hitting a wall, that their parents are upset with their lack of so-called progress? Developmental plateaus are a necessary part of learning, nobody can succeed entirely without them. Students come through them stronger and better equipped to learn than before. The only time these proverbial walls truly become insurmountable obstacles is when they are so stressful and demoralizing to young students that they throw up mental blocks that they cannot get through. It is not the job of the teachers and parents to break down these “walls”. They are there for a purpose. It is the job of teachers and parents to break down and, even better, prevent students’ mental blocks. Without those mental blocks, students will break down their walls themselves.
