Professional learning should be a place where we feed our curiosity and grow in our practice. Additionally, professional learning should create a level of disruption that pushes us from our Comfort Zone, into the Fear Zone, then the Learning Zone. When professional learning reinforces what we already know and do, we aren’t growing, we are standing still. The Comfort Zone is a warm and fuzzy place to be. We feel good about our practice and reassured of our strengths. Too many educators spend their whole careers in the Comfort Zone. No one wants to go from comfort to fear and anxiety, who would choose that? But indeed those that are curious, those that seek to be and do better, travel across the Fear Zone with the confidence that they are going to learn and grow.
Good professional learning is an endeavor that pushes against our norms, against our beliefs, it challenges our reality. When our perspective is challenged, we begin to question that perspective. We begin to get a little uncomfortable with the questions being asked or the ideas being shared. If we don’t engage with the new learning through inquiry, we might be fighting hard to maintain the status quo, to stay safe.
When engaged in collaborative professional learning, we can experience peer pressure to take the dive into the Fear Zone. We might see individuals who move into fear by getting quiet or getting loud, or lashing out. We may have seen some of these behaviors in our colleagues at one time or another. When a new initiative encourages us to change, we can see some defense mechanisms peering out behind the curtain. This is the tipping point for real change to occur. When we feel that disruption to our safe world, we either embrace the feeling and push ourselves to the other side of fear, or we revolt and hide in the status quo.
When you experience the disruption from professional learning, what do you do, where do you go? True change has some pain associated with it, either mild disruption or dramatic shifts in our practices and beliefs. However, when we embrace the fear and anxiety of the unknown, real learning and growth occur and we come out the other side rejuvenated and triumphant.