Juggling through a teacher education program

Juggling lessons help future teachers understand what it’s like to learn something new.

For a quarter century, I taught an elementary curriculum course, the course where students take everything they’ve learned in their teacher education program and apply it in the field before beginning student teaching. I had my students develop lessons and units that focused on big ideas and essential questions, engaged students in powerful learning experiences, met content standards, and provided for diverse ways of learning. And one year, I added juggling to my class.

I am not talking about the metaphorical juggling that all teachers do all the time — juggling content, learning differences, schedules, forms, social-emotional growth, lunch, field trips. No, I’m talking about throwing three objects up in the air and trying not to let them drop.

I initially added it to the course for selfish reasons. I was bored with teaching the same class over and over and wanted to do something different. So I brought 100 beanbags to class and told my students I was going to teach them to juggle. “Imagine going into your 5th-grade classroom, pulling out three balls, and juggling,” I said. “The students will love you.”

My experiment in juggling quickly became much more than a way to impress elementary students — or alleviate my own boredom. As I watched my students during our regular Friday juggling period, I saw the faces of success and struggle, of triumph and defeat, of achievement and frustration. I realized I was teaching them what their students would experience in their classrooms.

Here are some of the lessons my students learned.

Learning something new can be difficult and frustrating

As teachers, we sometimes forget how hard learning can be. We take it for granted that if we use the right instructional strategies, give the correct amount of guided practice, and gradually release responsibility to the student, all will be well. But it’s rarely that simple, and as they tried again and again to throw and catch their beanbags, my students were reminded that even with a perfect lesson plan, learning something new can be hard, frustrating, and sometimes embarrassing.

One aspiring teacher, Sarah, became increasingly frustrated with her inability to juggle. Despite practicing just as much as her classmates, she was unable to keep three beanbags in the air at the same time. The experience reminded her of what it was like to learn math in elementary school:

I struggled tremendously with math. It didn’t matter what type of math, I just couldn’t excel at all . . . Sometimes it seemed easier to give up than to try. I felt that way with juggling, too.

Another student, Carolyn, commented: “This experience helped me connect with some of the ways children feel when they struggle with a subject.”

Trying to learn something new helps you develop empathy

Alison never learned to juggle. She worked hard, struggled, and felt frustrated as she watched other students easily doing what she just couldn’t master. She said, “I feel that I have gained a hundred times greater understanding of what so many students go through as they learn.” That understanding will make her a better teacher.

I heard one student say, “Don’t watch me. I can’t do it very well. I get nervous when you watch me.” She later commented in her final reflections,  “If an adult can feel this anxious about juggling in front of 10 of her peers, how should a six-year-old feel trying to read in front of 25 of their peers?”

As teachers, we sometimes forget how hard learning can be.

One Friday, Allyssa walked into the class with her beanbags, threw them on the table, and said, “I’m not going to do this anymore.” I asked her if she’d let a child who struggled with reading to simply stop trying. In her reflections, she commented:

I understand what it is like to be the child learning the new task, being frustrated with the task, ready to give up, and wanting to do away with the objects causing the frustration. I realized what it was like to make excuses for myself as to why I could not learn this new skill.

Jen said:

This activity has opened my eyes to the world of teaching. I stood in my future students’ shoes and saw what they deal with every day. Now that I have the reminder of how difficult it can be to learn something new, I will be a better teacher.

When we understand our students’ struggles, we are better able to respond with empathy when they get frustrated and want to give up.

There are many ways to learn

Teachers know that children learn in different ways. Yet, despite having practiced creating lesson plans that include multiple approaches to learning content, once they’re in their own classrooms, teachers often revert to teaching in the way they like to learn and put all they know about multiple ways to learn on a shelf. For example, I prefer to learn by doing, so when I first started teaching college, I developed a powerful array of hands-on experiences to teach concepts. One day a student said, “Can you please give us some visuals, some handouts, some overheads?” I taught to my strength, forgetting that others may learn better in other ways.

When teaching students to juggle, I used multiple forms of representation. I gave them a handout that broke down the process step by step. I showed them how to juggle through careful modeling. I worked with students individually, in small groups, and as a whole class. I encouraged peer teaching and cooperative learning. I encouraged students to practice at home.

Some students labored over the written directions step by step. Some talked to each other as they worked through each step. Some came to me for individual help saying, “Show me one more time” or “Can you watch me and tell me what I’m doing wrong?” Some simply threw the beanbags in the air over and over until they mastered it. Lizzie commented:

As a future teacher, this experience reminded me about the many different learning styles people have. Showing or telling someone how to learn certain materials may not be enough for every individual to succeed. I will need to be open to new techniques of teaching and aware of the best ways of how my students can learn.

Every child should be successful at something every day

Imagine being put on a yellow bus in the morning, driven to Fenway Park, given a bat, and told to keep practicing until you hit the ball over the Green Monster in left field. For some students, being told to write a short story when you don’t know how to write a sentence can be just as intimidating. Breaking a complicated skill up into smaller steps provides opportunities for success along the way. Learning to hold a bat (or toss a single beanbag from one hand to another or use correct punctuation) is one step. Each new step —Keep your eye on the ball. Keep your elbow up. Practice swinging level. — gets you closer to the goal until you finally connect. It goes foul, but you connected, which is more than you ever thought you could do.

That’s exactly how learning to juggle worked for Caitlyn:

I went from not being able to catch one beanbag to being able to toss and catch two. Everyone clapped. I felt successful even though I was a long way from being able to juggle three beanbags. That success helps to motivate an individual to work harder to achieve the goal.

Don’t let them drop

Being a teacher is hard work. Teachers juggle a million things every day, as do students. They juggle their personal lives, their household responsibilities, their schoolwork, their emotions. Juggling everything at once is hard. How do we keep every student engaged? How do we meet their various needs? How do we let them know they matter?

The most important thing to remember about teaching is the same thing you need to remember about juggling. Jen reflected:

As I started my field experience, I began to understand juggling in an entirely different way. I saw clearly how a teacher must always keep the bags in the air. Even when the bag is not in the direct line of sight, it cannot be forgotten about. My cooperating teacher always knew where each student was, both physically and academically. She juggles the balls of content areas in the space of time. When a ball happens to fall to the floor, it is quickly picked up and an alternate plan of attack is formed. Learning to juggle reminded me of what a challenge teaching really is, juggling schedules, students, and time. And you can’t let any of them drop.

Learning involves risk

Jennie, another student who never learned to juggle, spent hours trying to understand the process. She worked through the handout and talked to a friend who’d been juggling for years. “I finally understood the concept,” she said, “but still I could not make it work.”

In the end, Jennie reflected, “I may not know how to juggle with great accuracy. but I have learned a lot about myself as a learner and as a teacher.” Jennie said she wanted her students to be able to take risks, to seek out different ways of doing things, going beyond the teacher’s instructions if necessary, and even risking failure:

It’s not always the end result that matters, whether it be juggling or reading Tale of Two Cities without difficulty. It’s the process that brings you there, that guides you through, because in the end it’s not whether you accomplished the task but what you learned about yourself that truly matters. I thought juggling would be simple. It grew into a way to find myself.

Final advice

Take a risk. Feel the frustration of trying something you’re not sure you’ll be able to accomplish. Tackle a new language. Build a guitar. Learn how to change the oil in your car. Take a dance class. Drive across the country with no itinerary. Submit a poem to a poetry contest. If you can’t think of anything else, try to juggle. Give yourself the chance to feel what your students feel every day and return to the classroom with a new perspective.

Never give up and above all, don’t let them drop.

This article appears in the October 2021 issue of Kappan, Vol, 103, No. 2.