Challenge Success - Staff Looks at Academic Risk-Taking

The staff group focused on academic risk-taking. Academic risk-taking (sometimes called intellectual risk-taking) involves having the courage to share tentative ideas, articulate confusion, ask questions, and try something new. It requires one’s willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. Teachers who were nominated by peers as those who encouraged academic risk-taking were solicited by the Challenge Success staff for their ideas. Here is the Challenge Success Team's full report:

INTRODUCTION

Academic risk-taking (sometimes called intellectual risk-taking) involves having the courage to share tentative ideas, articulate confusion, ask questions, and try something new. It requires one’s willingness to make mistakes and learn from them. To highlight academic risk-taking in our school community, the Challenge Success committee solicited ideas from staff members nominated as people who excel at encouraging this valuable quality. We tried to incorporate as many voices as possible; we know that many more of you positively challenge your students’ notions of success by promoting academic risk-taking, and we thank you!

Staff responses have been edited for length and clarity.

 

WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT IT?

A year of upheaval and reinvention has reaffirmed the importance of academic risk-taking. For instance, we are learning (and re-learning) virtual and concurrent instruction by experimenting and making mistakes. Academic risk-taking embodies one of Challenge Success’s goals: helping students manage expectations. Academic risk-taking asks students to rethink notions of success in school and life beyond. History teacher Brian Field said, “For me, academic risk-taking has to do with possibilities. I think a lot of times, when you see the absence of risk-taking, it’s the idea that there's one pathway to do something. If people start understanding academic risk-taking as possibilities, it can be exciting, encourage curiosity, and reduce some pressure. When I talk to students, I say it’s about asking, what’s out there? Let’s see!”

 

ACADEMIC RISK-TAKING IN THE CLASSROOM

You may be unfamiliar with the term, but we’re willing to bet many of you frequently foster academic risk-taking in your classrooms! Which of the following strategies do you already employ? Which might you try in the fourth quarter? English teacher Maria Gilbert and math teacher Laureen Nelson commented on the importance of modeling. Laureen said, “I make mistakes all the time in my classroom in a way that is non-threatening. Everybody makes mistakes. People have to make mistakes when they’re learning; it’s in the mistakes that you learn, right?” Maria echoed, “When I pose questions, they tend to be really hard, and I’ll be totally honest and tell the kids, I don’t know the answer to this question! I would love to hear what you have to say about it! Also, I find things out in current events that relate to the novels that we are reading. Some of these articles or videos I’m encountering for the first time. The risk-taking is admitting to them that I’m not always the expert. I’m just as inquisitive as they are.” Being candid with students about what you don’t know can be unnerving. Computer science teacher Stephen Stern discussed the importance of grappling with one’s potential disquiet before helping students manage their uneasiness with not having all of the answers: “The first thing you have to do is recognize and work through your own experiences as a teacher to feel that discomfort and not expect immediate resolutions.”

Modeling speaks to the connection between academic risk-taking and social-emotional learning: academic risk-taking depends upon cultivating a safe learning environment. Students have to feel comfortable and supported to reveal their vulnerabilities. Technology teacher Jared Seyler said, “Anytime something breaks or something like that, I never make it a big deal. It's more like, ‘Oh, that's okay. Let's just try and figure out what we did, and we'll fix it.’ It’s no big deal, and we’ll just move on. That should just be the norm in my room: it is okay for these things to happen. I always say, ‘That's good that we broke it because now we learned something.’ The other thing I do, even for some of these students who are seniors and have had me multiple times, I notice they struggle with their research stuff. They say, ‘Well, I don't want to just start building yet because I'm not sure if it's going to work,’ and so I try and tell them anecdotal stories. Sometimes they think very highly of me in terms of what I can build. And I tell them no, most of the things that I build don't work the first time, but I don't know what's not going to work until I do it. So I will give examples of stuff I’ve personally done that doesn't work. And [that failure] is a good thing to me. I enjoy it, and that's how I learned as well.” Likewise, math teacher Dan Tra shared, ”In the classroom, when something goes wrong, I joke about it. Make light of the situation. Broadcast it. Then we begin to approach solutions from different angles. We identify what we know and eliminate as much as we can until we can start formulating responses and testing them. Students begin to get acclimated with the idea that ‘wrongness’ isn’t a big deal or a huge hindrance. It’s just a part of the process.” Brian Field also noted that cultivating a space for academic risk-taking is an opportunity for building community.

Stephen Stern recommended another strategy: gradually incorporating occasions for academic risk-taking: “It’s good to throw in a balance of some things that are comfortable. Allow students to keep one foot in their comfort zone but also provide those challenge questions that maybe don’t have an answer or are open-ended.”

Echoing Brian Field’s emphasis on possibilities, math teacher Kai Sam Ng talked about the importance of offering students choice: “Academic risk-taking means providing students with choice. In order for risk-taking to be genuine and not simply forced, students must have the space to choose their own paths toward mastery. For example, this year in TJ Math 4, we had students do one mini-project at the end of each unit in lieu of a test. Each mini-project usually had three choices that students could pick from that followed certain themes. Giving students some choice allowed us to have some incredibly creative pieces from students that we simply would not see if we gave them a test. Some students went above and beyond with these projects because they chose to do something that interested them, and that made me very proud of what they did.” English and journalism teacher Erinn Harris articulated the significance of choice: “It means that students take true ownership of their learning. They’re not relying on someone to disseminate information just so they can spit it out on a test. It means they have an idea, and they pursue it. Maybe a teacher is guiding them or advising them, but the risk-taking is owning that interest, even if they don't know exactly what they're doing. Academic risk-taking is pursuing something for intrinsic reasons rather than extrinsic ones. Being okay with not knowing, but also pursuing the desire to know.”

 

ACADEMIC RISK-TAKING IN LIFE BEYOND HIGH SCHOOL

As adults, we understand that risk-taking is an important life skill. Latin teacher Patty Lister revealed, “I think that taking on a project that seems big or scary can be one of the most rewarding ways to grow. This is especially true when it feels just a bit outside your comfort zone or that you might be a little underqualified to take it on. I had had that experience in the last couple of years when I said yes to teaching a college course at UVA and taking on iNite as the faculty sponsor. Both experiences were scary and intimidating at first but proved to be very rewarding.”

English teacher Susie Lebryk-Chao shared her experience with academic risk-taking as a teacher: “In redesigning our HUM I Global Cuisine project for the virtual environment, we are trying "visual essay" as a genre (instead of a cardboard trifold and student-manned food booths). It has led to lots of questions! What is a visual essay? What does it look like? How does it work? In actuality, we are exploring this genre together with the students instead of showing them exemplars and handing them a carefully worded rubric. The openness of the genre will allow for diverse approaches, which is scary and exciting. When we asked the students to help write the rubric, they were insightful. As teachers, we've learned as we stumbled, trying out the assignment ourselves - incorporating music, selecting visuals, etc.” Math teacher Amy Lampazzi offered an example that is probably all too familiar: “This entire year has been teacher/student upside down. I have sought out and relied on technical advice from students. Most of the students seem to appreciate being able to teach the teacher how to do new things.”

 

FINAL THOUGHTS

There are so many amazing things happening at TJ concerning academic risk-taking! We hope hearing from your peers inspires you to identify in your practice how you’re promoting trying new things, questioning, revealing confusion, and making mistakes. History teacher Gwen Wright summarizes the importance of academic risk-taking: “What I love about academic risk-taking is that it encourages us to be lifelong learners. Rather than studying just for an end destination such as a test or graduation, I use academic risk-taking as a constant development over time. This makes me eager to learn through inquiry, and my goal is to encourage this approach among my students.”