Using the Five Stages of Recovery as Pathways to Learning

Doctors recognize there are five stages to recovery. Whether its an unhealthy habit, an addiction or creating better habits the five stages are the same with the same potential for failure or success.

The first is stage is to pre-contemplate.  It means you might have thought about change, but it’s only a thought.  Like thinking you’d like to lose a few pounds.  The second is to contemplate.  You have in mind a possibility or a plan but you’ve not given serious thought about making an important change.   The third stage is action.  You do some research about diets and consider the best one for you. Nothing really happens until the fourth stage where you make a plan, the plan is the beginning of your commitment to being better. The last stage is the relapse.   Doctors know even the most dedicated person will experience a relapse.  The reason is whenever you initiate change even positive changes you activate fear in the emotional brain.   If the fear is great enough your fight or flight response will go off and you will literally run away from what you’re trying to do.   In the human brain change is difficult and uncomfortable. 

Doctors recognize that relapse is not failure; it’s merely the response of our brain circuitry.   Unfortunately many of us will give up when our brain signals this struggle instead of acknowledging this important step in the process to change.

Understanding these limitations can be useful in the classroom.   These same synaptic pathways in the brain can make learning new information or a new skill difficult.  Some children like the addict in recovery will relapse and simply decide they aren’t smart enough or the task is too hard to continue.

Teachers have the perfect opportunity to help their students become more comfortable with these relapses by creating a comfort zone for learning.   Every student in your class should be confident enough to accept their mistakes and struggles.  This confidence needs to come from you – the classroom teacher. 

Every time you present a new concept or idea preface it with the information that learning is hard work and every person has different abilities.  By doing this you give students the space they need when they relapse.   Students can also work cooperatively in small groups so that those who grasp ideas quicker can teach and work with the slower learners.   Your classroom can become a place of opportunity instead of failure.