Middle School Attitudes
I spent three years as a middle school math teacher. My students were in the “middle school,” which is between elementary and high school. Their brains were transitioning into adolescence, and it was an uncomfortable stage, to say the least. As you might imagine, they were often not very concerned with 8th-grade pre-algebra. Some of the phrases I heard most often were, “How will I ever use this?” or “My dad said I’m never going to use this,” or “This doesn’t make any sense. Why is it so hard?” Their rampant frustration was coupled with constant complaints of being “stuck.” They could not see past the threshold.
During those years, my job became eighty percent relational. Students needed to trust me before they would listen to anything I had to say. They needed assurance of a safe learning environment before moving toward the unknown. While the authors we have read this week speak of thresholds and planks to help cross them[1], I would add the wall that some students construct as they approach a threshold. When concepts seem scary and daunting, many students would “stone-wall” learning, disengaging to protect themselves from perceived failure. “If I don’t attempt it, then I won’t fail” was an attitude many held. Before they could cross the boundary, they had to be willing to wrestle with the ideas, which meant their walls had to come down. Again, building relationships was paramount.
Once trust was established, I focused on helping students relate the material to their everyday lives. To bring them to a state of liminality, I needed to make connections between difficult concepts and the world around them. When introducing troublesome concepts, I crafted lessons to address the looming questions that prevented them from “crossing the threshold.” We didn’t avoid the unknown; instead, we talked about it.
One memorable lesson involved teaching slope (rise/run) on the football field bleachers. I handed out equations and asked the students to coordinate themselves across the bleachers, moving up and down accordingly. At first, they looked as though I was crazy. They scoffed and rolled their eyes. However, they began to move. Their outward struggle mirrored their internal wrestling with the concept. But I didn’t stop the struggle—watching the ‘lightbulb’ moments happen in real time was fascinating. The connections they made during that hands-on activity built confidence, which carried over when we returned to the graph in the classroom.
Crossing the threshold requires both submission to the process, confidence in one’s abilities, and safe learning relationships. Students must trust their teacher enough to believe where they are headed is a good and necessary place. They must also have enough confidence in their own learning ability to subject themselves to the discomfort of not knowing. Admitting ignorance is humbling but is also the first step toward transformation.
In this doctoral program, I am on a similar journey toward liminality, and I struggle to muster up confidence in my learning ability. Additionally, I will be confronted with many threshold concepts as I engage with my personal NPO. How will they affect me? What if I don’t know what to do with my discoveries and underlying causes? How will I be transformed as a result?
To succeed, I need to let go of previous, comfortable positions and engage in strange, troublesome, less familiar territory. Though it will be uncomfortable, I recognize this is the place of transformation. As in my teaching days, I have often doubted myself in this liminal space—a natural reaction to its challenges. Yet, I trust this learning environment to be safe and that my teachers will point me in the right direction. The planks offered, while shaky, are suitable for the crossing.
To thrive, I must remain tightly engaged with my learning community, maintain hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience, and prepare to repeatedly cross the threshold from comfort to discomfort.[2] My greatest struggle is articulation, more than relational issues with a supervisor. Writing blockages and struggling to express my thoughts clearly produce the most angst. I hope the integrative nature of the threshold concepts I encounter change my identity as a student to be confident as part of the community.[3]
Liminality is an uncomfortable yet transformative space. Whether I’m helping students trek up and down stadium bleachers or navigating my own doctoral journey, the process requires trust, intentionality, and resilience. Just as I encouraged my students to embrace the struggle and cross the thresholds, I’m learning to embrace discomfort as an opportunity for growth. May it be not just messy but also miraculous.
[1] Meyer, Jan, and Ray Land. _Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge_. London: Routledge, 2006. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203966273, 192.
[2] Ray Land, Jan H. F. Meyer, and Michael T. Flanagan, eds. Threshold Concepts in Practice. Educational Futures, v. 68. Leiden Boston: Brill | Sense, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6300-512-8, 115.
[3] Meyer and Land, 80.
About the Author
Mika Harry
2 responses to “Middle School Attitudes”
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Mika, this is a beautiful and hope-filled post. Your sentence, ‘To thrive, I must remain tightly engaged with my learning community, maintain hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and resilience, and prepare to repeatedly cross the threshold from comfort to discomfort,’ is relevant to us all. Thank you.
I look forward to some exhilarating moments of discovery alongside the challenges of thresholds and liminal spaces.
Honestly, I couldn’t do this program without this amazing community of peers. The discomfort is real and powerful, so encouragement is needed for resilience.