Getting Through Bogus:
Teaching Students to Persevere When Things Are Hard
I’m a high school knitting teacher.
That’s a statement I’ve never made before, but as of this past Monday, it’s actually a true fact about me: I teach high schoolers how to knit. At the school where I teach, we offer all-new classes to students every month or so, and we just started a fresh cycle. It’s actually one of the (many) amazing luxuries of being a teacher at the alternative high school where I work— I get to invent my own courses, write all my own curriculum, and get excited about something new just about every four or five weeks.
Because my background is in teaching English, most of my workshop offerings are English-oriented (one of my favorite so far was a course in which we analyzed the show Stranger Things, dissecting and discussing storytelling elements like characterization, mood, and plot structure). Sometimes, though, I do like to venture outside my comfort zone and teach a workshop that isn’t all about English. For this round of workshops, I wanted to do something very different, something that didn’t focus so specifically on core academic skills. Rather, I wanted to offer a workshop that allowed students to be a little creative while working on building their “soft-skills” — patience, focus, and grit. Stamina for things that are hard at first, but so very worth it when you finally break through and get it.
Also, admittedly, the idea of my saggy-pantsed, tough-talking, hard-as-nails kiddos hunched over a yarn ball made me smile.
So, officially, I’m now a knitting teacher. We’re only a few days into the workshop, but each day this week, from 10:45–11:55, I’ve been teaching a group of about 15 kids about working yarn, casting on, and why size really does matter (needle size, of course). Just like I thought, it’s been really fun to see them learning something completely from scratch. And, just like I thought, it’s been a bit of an adjustment for kids who aren’t used to sticking with something when it gets hard. Just yesterday, only the second day of knitting instruction, a few kids were ready to give up entirely — a student named Jamarion was especially vocal.
“Ugh, why is this loop here?” I overheard him asking Alayna, who was hard at work with her own row of stitches. “This ain’t right.” Glancing over at his needle, she agreed.
“Nah, it ain’t,” She held up her own tangled mess, “But mine ain’t, either.” Smiling, she shrugged. “Just keep going.”
I was leaning over another student, showing her how to make an “X” with her needles, but I chimed in to agree with Alayna. She was right, I told Jamarion. Just keep going.
A few stitches later, Jamarion huffed out a frustrated sigh and tossed his needles onto the table in front of him. “I’m not gonna get this! I quit!” Again, he looked over at Alayna. This time, she didn’t even look up.
“You think Ms. Swesey learned how to knit by quitting? You think she just magically got it from jump?” I stood there, Alayna saying to Jamarion exactly I want to say to students all the time. Jamarion scowled, but kept listening. “No! You know she messed shit up at first! Difference is, she didn’t just give up and quit.”
Jamarion hesitantly picked up his needles and examined his work again. “But this looks bogus! I don’t want my stuff to look like this.” Placing her own work in her lap, Alayna looked him full in the face.
“Then KEEP GOING. It’s gonna be bogus at first, but then it won’t be as bogus. And then, after you practice enough, it’s gonna look good. You gotta get through bogus to get to good.” As Alayna went back to her project, I stood there, motionless. I repeated what she’d said in my head: you gotta get through bogus to get to good. Hot damn.
As I’ve been looking at the way we grant academic credits at my school, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about mastery. I’ve been laser-focused on what academic skills look like when they’re at their best, when we’re ready to release our students out into the world, diploma in hand. In thinking solely about the end-product — that final draft, thesis-driven argumentative essay — I admit that I lost sight of the messy, scratched-out, red-pen-marked rough draft that came first. There’s value in the journey you take to get to that final product, no matter how bumpy and twisted the road might be. Without even realizing it, Alayna reminded me that no one can show mastery of skills without lots (and lots) of practice first. If we’re only focused on whether students have or have not mastered skills, we’re missing out on the opportunity to explicitly teach them to persevere, to push through the hard stuff. In turn, they may miss out on the opportunity to ever get to mastery at all.
In introducing the craft to my students, I emphasized that the lessons you learn as a knitter can be applied to life. If you don’t relax, you make things more difficult for yourself. You should never compare your work to anyone else’s. You can follow a pattern, but don’t be afraid to get creative and put your own spin on things. What I didn’t expect was that I’d get a lesson out of it all, too: in centering my work around mastery of skills, I can’t forget to place value on what it takes for students to get there. I need to remember that sometimes, for lots of students, it’s a struggle to keep going when what they’re trying to learn just sucks. Students will struggle. Students will want to quit. Students might even try to quit. But with a little patience, some cheerleading, wise words from a peer, and maybe some knitting in there for good measure, they’ll ultimately learn that if they just keep going, they will someday get through the bogus and make it all the way to good.
