Focus on the PROCESS and not the RESULT

This past Christmas my son was given, as a gift from his cool uncle (with my blessing), the new Nintendo Classic Mini. It’s a retro version from the late 1980’s that I used to play when I was living life in the middle – well, actually when I was in Junior High. It has many classic games like Super Mario Brothers, Excitebike and Punch Out – games I loved as a kid. Seeing my son play, and then eventually getting my turn when he went to bed, brought back many memories for me. I remember playing in my parents’ bedroom, on the floor, close to the television because I didn’t have a television in my room. I remember spending so much time on the games (after my homework was done, of course!) that my thumb hurt.

 

When I was a kid, I loved to read about the latest and greatest video games and the secret codes on how to win but I didn’t have the luxury of the internet. I had to wait every month for the latest gamer magazine to go on the shelf of the local magazine shop and somehow convince my parents to take me there. For me, it was a competition with my friends to see who was going to finish the game first. We didn’t necessarily care about how we played the game - whether we used a “warp zone” in Mario brothers or an “cheat code” to skip levels or rounds. We just wanted to finish.

 

As I began to think about this video game scenario, it brought me to some recent conversations I have had over the years with parents, students and teachers about focusing on the “process” and not the “result.” Two cases in point – when students are given a test back, many of them rush to get the paper so they can see the grade. For a large portion of them, they take the test, see the grade and then file it away in their binder, never to look at it again. To those students, I say: wait a second. Aren’t you at least a little bit concerned about what you got wrong? Don’t you want to see your mistakes and make corrections so you know the concept? If you answer with a “no” well then shame on you.

 

Another situation of “process” and “result” occurred late last year when a student had violated the honor code on a writing assignment. The standard practices for consequence is a zero on the assignment and an after school detention. In this case, it was important to make this more of a learning opportunity so I had the student redo the assignment and that student would receive the average of the two grades. The second time around the student had done much better, an almost perfect score, but when the grade report came out, it showed it as an F. The parent, rather upset at the F, asked me why I had the student go through the trouble or redoing the assignment if all they were going to get was an F. My answer to the parent was, “It’s about the process and not the result. Your child needs to learn how to do the assignment and would not understand how to do it if I did not require them to do so.” Ultimately, the parent saw the same thing I did and finally agreed with me about it.

Students should take more time to pause, reflect, review and focus so that they can begin to see the “process” without worrying about the “result.” The results will come and they will be results that they desire. Just slow down a little bit… give a little extra and you will see a little bit goes a long way.