3 Strategies to Practice Patience in K12 Schools

#Leadership Read time:
Patience may be a virtue, but it’s also a skill, and it’s hard work to master.

And yet patience is assumed to be part of everyday life from toddlerhood onward. Messaging about patience tells us it is something we have and lose, not something we train and flex daily. Perhaps because patience makes us look idle in a society that prioritizes action over just about everything else. But internally, patience can make the difference between just existing at school and becoming engaged with learning and with each other.

That’s pretty solid motivation to improve. So how can schools help people practice patience?

 

Accept that we lack patience

Wrestle with the idea that patience can be practiced—but you won’t like the process much.

Now more than ever in any time in history, waiting isn’t really waiting anymore. The missives we enjoy reading from centuries ago represent days and days of anticipating communication via letter. Now we can send 37 text messages in the span of 15 minutes. There’s a recalibration of what “patience” really means happening. There’s no sense in trying to rewind the concept of patience but rather to define what it feels like in modern terms.

You will need to reach out and capture your patience. Waiting for it, contrary to all logical conclusions, will not bring it to you.

 

Patience practice for kids

Once upon a time, Sesame Street taught kids a lot about the world without relying on technology. Now, Elmo summons a smartphone (“Smarty”) and announces he’s going to “LOOK! IT! UP!” when kids are dissecting new concepts.

While smartphones are ubiquitous and it’s become archaic to play researcher in the library reference section, the idea that knowledge is an instantaneous gift bestowed upon a child rather than a process of trying and failing and trying again has really gummed up the works of learning and teaching. How DO you model patience to a pre-reader? Play is the way.

It’s almost impossible to shoehorn play into even the youngest students’ school days, but earth-angel early childhood educators are trying. The process of play helps shift that instant-gratification addiction. Students learn to play (yes, many need to be taught how) and how to take turns, solve conflicts, and care for each other.

Read more about the importance of play in early childhood and beyond.

 

Patience practice for teens and adults

It’s all well and good to practice turn-taking and de-escalation in a room of little ones, but it’s a whole different ballgame modeling patience to adolescents and fellow adults.

Professional development doesn’t always cover social-emotional learning skills (SEL), but what if it could help soothe frazzled staff a little? What if investing in individual, internal development could impact our professional days? Practicing these ABCs can help unlock the skill of patience in older people.

Agency: Making choices for yourself within a framework of goals and requirements.
For students, agency looks like making decisions for their own educations. Project-based learning (PBL) can create expectations for how to demonstrate mastery of concepts without dictating the content.

See how a PBL approach can increase agency.

Boundaries: Being able to manage your workload, work hours, and fulfill your agreements without burnout.
For adults, especially adults with high-demand roles or those who manage relationships all day every day, it’s difficult to refill the cup of empathy that’s constantly pouring into people around us. Practicing setting, maintaining, and communicating boundaries not only helps empathetic people avoid burnout, but it also creates a culture of understanding. We can all relate to feeling spread too thin—imagine also having an admin team who helps lighten your mental load and protect your peace.

See how automating data can help retain teachers.

Collaboration: Building, maintaining, and leaning on the people around you IRL.
As we have gotten more comfortable interacting through cyberspace rather than face-to-face, the art of in-person communication and engaging thoughtfully with peers has fallen by the wayside. The good news is that kids are always human and always wired to seek connection. Gently steering students toward each other for feedback, whether by choice or assignment, gives students valuable experience interacting with peers they literally do not get anywhere else thanks to disappearing no-cost third spaces.

Turns out, tolerating each other is a skill worth practicing. Read more.

 

Patience for ideas and conclusions

Even the Cadillac study of delayed gratification in children led us to jump to conclusions. Let me explain the marshmallow experiment.

Long abstract short, researchers in the late 1980s devised a study around 4–6-year-old kids left alone with one marshmallow and told if they could manage NOT to eat it, after 15 minutes they’d receive TWO marshmallows. That’s twice the reward but with a steep price to a little one: the self-control and patience to wait for the increased reward.

Not every kid was capable, and the ones who showed more patience also went on to show better outcomes in behavior and test scores. For decades the marshmallow study was accepted proof that patience, the virtue, was indicative of life performance.

Only it turns out replicating the experiment and accounting for differences in culture, whether researchers were truthful and reliable, and other factors showed different conclusions. Children were not doomed to a lifetime of hyperactivity and failing grades just because they couldn’t hold out for a second marshmallow. Studies continued until finally in 2024 the original conclusion (that students who could hold off on inhaling a sweet would indeed become more successful adults) was debunked.

Questions. Questions. More questions. Now more than ever, resisting the urge to accept the easiest, quickest, top-Google-results-est answer to a question is quite possibly the best skill educators can bestow upon students.

May the “why?” phase never end and may people of all ages take a breath and a seat instead of rushing past opportunities for connection and wonder.
 

Follow-up resource: How balancing tech and humanity can help K12 educators

Ever wondered if edtech could unburden teachers? Learn 10 ways to use your SIS to support and retain teachers.




 
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