I was at home the other weekend and I came across this interesting video on YouTube. The video was called the 'Backwards Brain Bicycle' and it piqued my interest. This man, Destin, was at his work and his buddies made a bicycle with 2 cogs on the steering wheel so that when you steered left, the wheel went right and vice versa. He hopped on, expecting to ace it and what he found was that he was completely unable to ride this bike - at all!

This was extremely frustrating for Destin because he assumed that it would be as simple as reversing his idea of how to ride a bike - but he was unable to do it. He goes on to say that it revealed one thing about his brain - he had the knowledge on how to ride it but didn't understand how to ride it. He came to the conclusion that knowledge does not equal understanding. 

As teachers (and as parents), we try to instil into our children a culture that says ‘It’s OK’ to fail when trying to learn new tasks! Instead, we believe that there is so much that you can learn from those mistakes and consequently get better at whatever you are doing. This is often easy to say, but very hard to live out as adults.

Destin goes on to say, "Once we have a rigid way of doing something in our head, we can't change it even if we want to". I find myself thinking regularly about this and I am continually reminded that our kids are amazing.  Each day at school they are challenged to learn new concepts and most kids seem to take it in their stride. I think that if I ever had to go back to school and be a student again, my old  ‘set in its ways’ brain probably wouldn't cope.

Long story short, Destin learns to ride the backwards bike after 8 months of trying. He challenged his son and it only took him 2 weeks to figure it out.

Although our teachers, students and parents have all experienced huge challenges this term, I am encouraged by the willingness of everyone to try new ways of doing things. Keep up the amazing work!  We are less than 2 weeks till holidays and I hope you all get a well-deserved rest with your families.

If you have a spare 7 mins 57 seconds, I highly encourage you to watch the video! (The Backwards Brain Bicycle   https://youtu.be/MFzDaBzBlL0)

Enjoy the rest of your week.

Jason Davis