Story 5: Challenges
A Short Short Story to Inspire -- Challenges we teachers face (and students)

Stephanie Curtis’ math class was having a tough week and today didn’t promise to be any better. They had been working through percentages and were getting frustrated because they just weren’t getting it.

Stephanie was ready to just give up as well. She was doing her best to walk with them through the concepts, but didn’t seem to be getting anywhere.

“Can we just try something easier?” Rachel asked, with a big smile on her face.

“Oh, you mean something like… subtraction?” Stephanie replied, with a grin.

“Yeah,” Stephen chimed in. “Maybe we could just subtract this stuff from your lesson book.”

“Nice try, Stephen.” Stephanie smiled, sighed, and then took a look around the room.

“I know this is really difficult for you, isn’t it?” She asked them. Heads nodded around the room. She thought for a minute and then continued.

“Do any of you remember what it was like learning how to ride a bike?”

“I’m sure Clay does,” Colton said, “since he just learned last week.” A wad of paper from Clay’s direction hit Colton in the back of the head.

“Very funny,” Stephanie replied. “You may not remember this, but I bet it was a real struggle to learn how to ride. In the process, you probably fell many times, scraped some knees and elbows, maybe even wanted to give up.”

“But what if you had given up? If you had just decided that this was too hard, nobody needs to learn how to ride a bike anyway, that you’ll just walk wherever you need to go until you can drive? Then you would have missed out on the joys and freedom of riding a bike.”

“Life is going to send challenges your way. That’s a fact. But you will always be better off for working through them, growing stronger, learning new things. You will never look back and regret doing the hard things.”