Benefits of leaving the comfort zone

For three weeks this summer I stepped out of my comfort zone. It taught me a lesson about teaching.

Leaving one’s comfort zone is not something that happens very often to most adults. Instead of feeling powerful, in control, full of answers, I felt the inverse: powerless and struggling for answers. It reminded me of the way I felt when I was a kid and I went to school. It was like being new, different, and forced to learn out of necessity. And there’s great benefit in having this experience every so often – for kids and for teachers!

It’s not hard to do: Just go to a foreign country. I went to France: a culture that was immensely hospitable, to be sure, but foreign to me. Most significantly, I spent three weeks working very hard at using the language of my surroundings. To navigate, buy food, fill the car with gas, find a restroom, purchase postcards and stamps – the most mundane needs or demands of daily life – required a verbal exchange in a language I had not studied since high school.

I got very good at rapid thumbing through the dictionary, guessing at the meaning of signs or instructions (Try doing this at 140 kph on the Circumpherique with Le Mans-inspired French drivers tailgating!), applying my high school French and those Latin roots from English class. And, of course, smiling or using facial expression to convey perplexity and thanks. As it turns out, nonverbal cues and social skills transcend language.

I was back in the beginner group, a learner again, on a steep learning curve for the first time in years.

We had a wonderful trip, but the experience made me think a lot about what school must be like for many kids: a foreign language, a foreign country in which survival depends on acquiring an unfamiliar set of skills or responses. People look at you like you’re dumb just because you can’t say what you want, what you think, what you need. I’ll never forget the haughty scorn of the woman at the Parisian boulangerie when I used the verb “importer” instead of “emporter” to ask for coffee to takeout! One little slip in the pronunciation of a vowel and you’re in the ridicule zone.

I had not felt such confusion as a learner since algebra class back in ninth grade. Algebra was a foreign language to me, which is why I spent two years in Algebra I. And it’s probably what studying poetry was like for some of my former students, when I was their English teacher.

By my second week in France, I could understand far more than I could express. A few familiar language patterns were starting to emerge from the barrage of words and rhythms my ears were taking in. I had made acquaintances. I could pick up on subtleties in the language, enough to know when one shopkeeper was telling another that I didn’t know what I was talking about. But I did! I knew exactly what I wanted to say – I was trying to make a joke – I just couldn’t find the right words.

How many students go to a foreign country every day when they step into school, leaving their comfort zone as they encounter linguistic, social or physical demands that are unfamiliar, difficult or even hazardous?

At least I knew what to do about my discomfort. My problem was solved with translation, something I could do for myself with that dictionary. I looked up hundreds of words. Before entering a store or ordering lunch, I studied the vocabulary I would need. I dreamed in French vocabulary. It still took courage to attempt to speak those newly acquired words, make mistakes with the pronunciation, risk embarrassment or failure.

Many kids don’t even know what steps to take, what questions to ask to begin to solve this problem of translation. But resiliency develops when you try.

I will not forget Jean and Nicole, our hosts in France. They encouraged my vocabulary and grammar; fetched the dictionary to aid in translation, spoke slowly or found simpler expressions for their ideas or instructions. They established a comfort zone in which failure didn’t matter – the attempt to communicate was honored. And they served wonderful local cheese and pate.

And I remember my second-year algebra teacher, who had the tools to translate that foreign mathematical language into something that approached clarity. I finally understood what those quadratic equations were describing. They were just a different kind of sentence after all, a strange grammar.

So if you’re a teacher dreaming those August teacher dreams, remember to consider what’s being lost in translation. Some of those new kids this year will be looking up at you in confusion. Perhaps you are speaking “French” to them, or they are thinking in French as they hear your English. Even your welcoming facial expressions might seem oddly idiomatic. Your comfort zone is their foreign country. Got your English-French dictionary handy? Pass the fromage, and bon appetite.

Todd R. Nelson is principal of the K-8 Adams School in Castine.