Reply To: Productive struggle

[Katrien Vance]

Something that worked for me was to let my students know, right from the start, that they didn’t know how to do what I was asking (when that was true). I also let them know I did NOT have a right answer in mind–and you have to be really honest with them and yourself about that.  I found that when I declared, “You don’t know how to do this,” they were free of all worry about it and were willing to try things, instead of trying to “remember” something they thought they were supposed to know.