When we first met, JC underestimated her ability.
She saw certain subjects as “hard”, “very hard”, or “SO hard”, which prevented her from enjoying or mastering these as she might have otherwise.
The perception of difficulty is almost universal among students: In general, when students think of something as difficult, they tend to struggle with it, perhaps because they believe they can’t do it well. They avoid it if they can. If they do work at it, they do so begrudgingly.
So a key to helping students develop their abilities and improve their performance is to help them change their relationship with difficulty, teaching them to MAKE DIFFICULTY DISAPPEAR.
Students can make difficulty disappear when they engage with a few useful truths:
1) Difficulty is temporary: each of us can make a list of things we used to find difficult that we no longer do.
2) Difficulty is a perception is it really hard, or does it just seem so because we don’t know it yet?
3) Difficult problems are generally just combinations of easier ones, so break them down!
One last thing to think about: we can build a bridge between something we find difficult and something we find easy, and use the comparison to make the difficult thing feel easier. I grew comfortable with maths, for example, by relating it in my mind with music!
By the time we wrapped up our work together, JC had mastered two subjects that she previously would have thought were “too hard” for her: literature and calculus. She did beautifully with both!
