This week’s #EdublogsClub prompt is about challenging situations, and at the end of a long weekend where I’ve spent more than fifteen hours putting together an inquiry-based project magazine on Canva, it seems an appropriate conversation to have. It has definitely been a challenging weekend.
I know many of my colleagues who would … well, they would just look at me in that way they have, gently scolding me for spending so much time on work when it is truly gorgeous outside. They’re not wrong …
… but they’re not right either.
Yes, this weekend has been overwhelmingly school-focused. Canva – at least, when you’re attempting to recreate in magazine format the steps for a semester-long cross-curricular inquiry project – has a steep learning curve. Perhaps that wouldn’t be the case for someone who isn’t as visual a person as I am (or who is more so), or for someone who has less of an at-times debilitating tendency towards perfectionism … but for me, it was a long and frustrating journey.
And yet – now that it’s done – I look at what I’ve created and think, “Wow.” I sent it to another teacher involved in the planning process for our unit (my student teacher, in fact – she is teaching the class for the first five weeks of the semester, and then I’ll be taking them back, so we collaborated with my Science/Math colleague on developing the unit), and she called it “visually stunning.” That felt pretty good.
We have a tendency to think of challenging as a bad thing – she’s a challenging student, it’s a challenging situation, where “challenging” is a synonym for “difficult.” Maybe it’s time to reclaim the word, where it symbolises something that is demanding and formidable, certainly; but also “stretching, exciting, stimulating” (Google definition and synonyms).
So yes. I had a challenging weekend … in all the best ways.