Ever feel like you’re a stone’s throw away from the finish line, only to experience a setback?
Sometimes walking with children toward goals can seem haphazard, slow, and very much unlike progress. We expect the path from one achievement to the next to be linear and clear-cut but that’s not always the case. Growth in learning really does happen over time, but we wonder—exactly how much time?
The time necessary to learn something is far more complex than we typically imagine, especially when we don’t reflect on how learning develops in our own lives. Think about something you learned, maybe as a child or even more recently as an adult. It’s probably hard to pinpoint exactly how the process happened to move from not knowing to knowing. Did it involve a lot of practice or exposure to something? Did it become better understood after applying what you knew to different examples or experiences? Did it involve elements of both failure and success?
Our initial responses to things are not always the same as the responses we have after we had a chance to repeat experiences with those things. When we return again and again to particular learning events, materials, problems, or ideas, we build an understanding that’s layered, rich, and cumulative. Then, it also takes time to articulate or demonstrate our thoughts and how our ideas are evolving with every learning encounter. It takes time to observe the thinking of others about the same subject matter and reflect on how other ideas line up with or differ from our own.
Let’s also consider that learners are growing in more ways than what we choose to notice or evaluate at any given time. Time is precisely what is needed to support holistic, organic, sophisticated growth in our children. How long? Long enough to notice details about how they’re developing. Long enough to broaden our understanding of growth and maturity. Long enough for new things to emerge.
May we see time as the gift that it is and use it to serve everyone well.
