Daring greatly

Learning requires daring greatly. After seven years of teaching and observation, I strongly believe that the students and teachers who open themselves up to the uncertainty, risk, and emotions of learning end up experiencing the greatest rewards. My lessons this week focus on how to dare greatly while learning English. In class my students and I are reading Brené Brown's book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead.

Learning a new language, especially when taking intense, private lessons with an experienced teacher, can be a vulnerable experience for any student. A solo student has nowhere to hide from direct questions. Lessons demand that we show up and fully participate. Good practice requires experimenting, taking risks with new vocabulary and grammar structures, and inevitably making mistakes. Daring greatly means accepting these mistakes, asking for feedback, and being open to try again. Continue! Devam ediyor! Students engage with vulnerability when they openly say:

"I don't know."
"I need help."
"I'd like to give it a try."
"It's important to me."
"Here's what I need."
"Here's how I feel."
"Please give me feedback."
"Can I get your opinion on this?"
"Can you teach me how to do this?"
"Thank you."

Teachers often need to improvise and be spontaneous to unpredictable questions. Teachers make mistakes, too. Earlier this week my student and I were reading an article in Time Magazine, and my student asked me, "what does innocuous mean?" From the context of the passage, I guessed the meaning is subtle. Later, I looked it up in Merriam Webster: innocuous means harmless or inoffensive. Close, but not quite good enough. Often my students call me a walking dictionary. Why would I look up the word when I have an American teacher? Sometimes I feel like "I am not enough." I am not as good as a dictionary. How can I live up to these high expectations? As a teacher, I express my vulnerability when I ask my students:

"I don't know."
"Let's look the word up in the dictionary."
"I'd like some feedback."
"What are your favorite and least favorite lessons?"
"What do you like and dislike about the program?"
"What can I do better next time?"
"Can I think about this question and get back to you?"
"Thank you."

My students in medicine require the courage to openly engage with their colleagues and patients. Doctors and surgeons speak to their patients about the level of uncertainty and risk for each treatment. Surgeons, doctors, and nurses may measure their self-worth and value through the level success of the treatment and recovery for their patients. A surgeon with a lot of experience saving and prolonging the lives of patients may start to feel strong and powerful. However, even this person may make mistakes or not follow all of the procedures, such as checklists. In her TED talk "Listening to shame," Brené Brown says:

We heard a brilliant solution to not killing people in surgery: have a checklist. You can't fix that problem without addressing shame because when they teach those folks how to suture, they also teach them how to stitch their self-worth to being all powerful, and all powerful people don't need checklists. (10:40-11:05)

After listening, my student, who is a surgeon, asks me, "So if I have a really bad day because a patient does not recover properly after a surgery, and then I express my feelings, is that vulnerability?"

"Yes, of course. Brown defines vulnerability as being open to risk, uncertainty, and emotional exposure," I reply. "But what if I tell you, 'be a man, stop crying'? Am I being vulnerable for you?"

"No, definitely not," he says. "If you show up to listen to me with empathy, then you are being vulnerable, too."

"Yes, vulnerability is a two way street," I reply. "That's why we have dost, best friends. We feel we belong with our close friends. We can be open and honest, therefore vulnerable, with these good listeners."

The first chapter of Daring Greatly opens with Theodore Roosevelt's speech "The Man in the Arena":

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Here are the new vocabulary:
Deeds are actions.
To err means to make mistakes.
To strive means to try.
To come short means to fail.
Shortcomings are mistakes, errors, or imperfections.
Valor means courage.
Valiant means courageous.
To strive valiantly means to try courageously.

In our case, the arena is the space to perform in English. This can be a presentation, meeting, conference, phone call, or e-mail. Be prepared for each moment and opportunity to use English while living in Istanbul. These are the spaces to dare greatly with English.