I thought I was helping. I was often getting it wrong.

Most of my updates begin with a personal story. This one does too, although it is not a story I am particularly proud of.

In fact, this update and the next one are built around several bad judgement calls I have made during my years in education. Moments when I saw a learner doing something and thought I understood what was happening. I saw procrastination. I saw disruptive behaviour. I saw someone who was not taking responsibility. And because I thought I understood the behaviour, I responded to it.

Looking back, I should often have paused for a little longer. I should have asked myself whether I was looking at behaviour that needed correcting, or at a learner who had quietly moved out of their stretch zone and into their panic zone.

That distinction matters. We educators are often quite good at recognising obvious panic. We notice tears, anger or someone completely shutting down. But the panic zone does not always look like panic. Sometimes it looks surprisingly productive.

I remember learners who spent a long time preparing to begin. They changed their title, searched for a better image, adjusted the layout and asked me another question about what the finished product should look like.

I saw procrastination. My response was usually something like: “You have spent enough time preparing. Just start.”

Sometimes that was exactly the push they needed. But not always. Sometimes they were not refusing to begin. They were afraid that what they produced would not be good enough. By pushing them to start, I was responding to the delay without understanding what was causing it.

What I should have asked was: “What is the smallest, imperfect first version you could make?”

That question does not remove the challenge. It makes the first step feel safe enough to take.

I have made a similar mistake when learners suddenly became extremely busy. They needed to organise their files. They wanted to do some more research. They had to get a drink first. They started helping someone else or talking about a completely different part of their project. They were doing all kinds of things, just not the thing that would move their own work forwards.

Again, I saw avoidance and responded to the behaviour:

• “Stop wasting time.”

• “Focus on your own work.”

• “You already have enough information.”

What I did not always see was that the next step might have felt too big, too unclear or too exposing. Perhaps they did not know how to begin. Perhaps they had too many options. Perhaps they understood the task but were worried about showing the result to someone else.

I should not have immediately made their activity stop. I should first have helped them identify what they were trying not to face. A question such as this might have told me much more: “Which part feels difficult right now: understanding it, choosing, starting or showing it?”

And then there were the jokes.

I love humour. It creates connection, releases tension and makes schools much better places to be. But I have also corrected learners for making jokes at exactly the moment when I should have become curious: just before they had to present, when someone gave them feedback, when a conversation became personal or when they no longer knew what to do.

I saw someone disrupting the moment and told them to stop. What I did not always recognise was that humour can also be armour. Correcting it publicly may make the learner feel even more exposed and create an even greater need for that armour.

I could have spoken to them quietly afterwards and said: “I noticed the jokes started when we began discussing your presentation. What changed for you at that moment?”

None of these signals proves that someone is in their panic zone. Preparing carefully can simply mean preparing carefully. Getting a drink may mean someone is thirsty. A joke may just be a joke.

These are not diagnoses. They are now part of my personal hotlist: small changes I try to notice before deciding what I think the behaviour means. Because my first interpretation has been wrong often enough.

I am learning to pause between what I observe and what I conclude. To stop rescuing and correcting too quickly, and to start spotting what may be happening underneath.

Next time, I will share three more bad judgement calls: the learner who pretends to understand, the learner whose silence feels like an improvement and the learner whose fear looks remarkably like resistance.

Until then, perhaps take another look at the behaviour that is currently frustrating you. What might you see when you stop trying to correct it?

Stay curious,
Rob