 | It is every parent's and educator's dream that students own their work. At the same time, students are confronted with an endless sea of requirements about what they do. The old trick of giving a young child two options becomes stale as they mature into an awareness of everything the world has to offer. Defiance and shutdown are endemic in the teen years, just when inaction (and unwise action) begins leading to more serious consequences. The trick lies in evolving your own process. If you have the agency to do this, choosing from among the options happens quickly, intuitively, and easily. This leads to a lighter, more expansive attention that allows you to get to work instead of resisting. Organizational process involves making lists of what needs doing, and in brainstorming out the smaller pieces of larger, longer-term projects (like papers and test prep). By breaking it down, pulling from all the portals and sources your tasks come from, you make a thing of your own. You're driving. When it's all in front of you, you can reshuffle it. Maybe it's in a Google doc. Maybe it's on index cards. Could be a bullet journal, a whiteboard, sticky notes. That's the first choice: how to see it all. Once your style of organization and arrangement becomes a daily habit, it's surprisingly fun and easy to estimate how much time each piece will take, and select what's next. Each piece may not be fun, but when you have the agency to choose how to proceed, you liberate the energy to move forward. |
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