If you’re a teacher, you’ve almost certainly heard someone say, “I want to challenge my students.”
I know I used to say it all the time.
But then one of my sixth graders said to me, “Mr. Byrd, I don’t really want to be ‘challenged.’”
This has stuck with me for years.
I totally get what this student meant. When faced with yet-another-worksheet, students don’t long for something “more challenging.”
“Challenging” Can Be Boring
If I asked you to alphabetize the US state capitals in under 90 seconds, you’d certainly be “challenged” – but you’d also feel stressed out and frustrated and never want to come to my classroom again.
I wish I had realized this years ago. Something can be “challenging” and also be at the very bottom of Bloom’s Taxonomy. We can assign a “challenging” fill-in-the-blank worksheet, a “challenging” true/false question, or a “challenging” timed math test.
I created many tasks that were indeed a challenge. But they were also boring and killed kids’ interest in the topic.
What Does “Challenge” Even Mean?
Let’s look up “challenge” in a thesaurus:
- (n) problem, difficult task, test, trial
- (v) disagree with, dispute, take issue with, protest against, call into question, object to
- (v) test, tax, strain, make demands on; stretch, stimulate, inspire, excite
Yuck!
“Challenge” has some seriously negative connotations. Yet… those last three words (stimulate, inspire, excite) start to get at my true goal. I definitely want “inspired” students, but I don’t want them to be “strained.” I want an “excited” class, but I don’t want learning to be a “trial.” I hope kids are “stimulated” by my lesson, not “taxed.”
So what is a better word for something that “stimulates, inspires, and excites”?
Instead, “Interesting”
So here’s the word I use now when I’m planning lessons for Byrdseed.TV: interesting.
I want to “interest” students. A student who is interested will work over the weekend simply because they want to know more. An interested student will stay in from recess by choice to keep at it. An interested student is intrinsically motivated.
I think this is a new motto of mine: great teachers make lessons interesting – not merely challenging. Their students are surprised when the bell rings because they were so darn interested! They stay after school to do a bit more. They come back on Monday having kept at it all weekend… by choice.
When faced with boring schoolwork, students long for something interesting.
Challenging Comes Along For Free
And here’s the big bonus: if it’s interesting, you get challenging for free! I’ll happily sit through an hour-long lecture that I find interesting. I’ll get through that challenging book if (and only if) it’s interesting! I’m motivated to get out of bed in the morning when there’s an interesting problem waiting for me to work on. But, I’d hit snooze if my day is filled with just “challenges.”
So let’s make “interesting” our first goal. And then, once kids are motivated and excited to learn, they’re more likely to take on challenges.
(All of this is also true for the word “engaging.” Engaging on its own isn’t a great goal. Here’s why. But if something is interesting, then you get “engaging” for free.)
So What Is “Interesting” Like?
To make something interesting, I need to set up drama, conflict, and ambiguity. I definitely don’t want to start with “Today we’re going to learn about X.” I’m not going to write the objective on the board (shudder).
And here are a few examples of (in my opinion) interesting tasks I’ve been working on:
- Do kids already understand fractions? Don’t give them harder fractions; connect fractions to a universal theme like power, conflict, or change. Which is more powerful, the numerator or the denominator?
- Rather than just memorize “rays” vs. “lines” vs. “line segments”, let’s wonder which is longer and ponder the nature of infinity?
- Get students thinking about how paragraphs are interlocking systems of sentences. Let them work backward to put broken paragraphs back together.
- Can we change the punctuation in a sentence to completely change that sentence’s meaning?
- What if we wrote in the style of another person?
- My favorite example of all time: finding something actually interesting about dividends and divisors!
PS: Well… now I realize that Dan Meyer posted his own take on challenging/interesting nine years before me. Oh well! 😭
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