Goldilocks tasks [my emphasis] are ones that are not too difficult and not too easy. If a task is too easy, people—whether they're children or adults—will get bored. If it's too hard, they'll get anxious or frustrated. You want that sweet spot, where something is within our range of challenge—not too easy, not too hard, but just challenging enough that we're engaged and being pushed to a slightly higher level. Those moments are some of the most optimal experiences in human existence—what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called flow. In flow moments, we lose a sense of ourselves, we're in the moment, and we're deeply engaged.
We need to create more of those moments in school. If you're doing something easy, you're never going to improve; if you're doing something too hard, you're not going to succeed, so you won't improve that way either. But if you have a Goldilocks task, you're much more likely to move toward greater mastery.
The problem is, the degree of standardization in school works against Goldilocks tasks. What's going to be a Goldilocks task for me isn't going to be a Goldilocks task for you. What's more, I may need a more challenging Goldilocks task in algebra than in Spanish. Standardization is an extremely blunt instrument: The work is going to be too easy for some people, too hard for others, and a Goldilocks task for only a few.
Lutheran Schools, being a “family,” more personal than many schools, are well set to be able to provide those Goldilocks tasks. We differentiate instruction in classrooms, seeking just what each student needs in order to thrive, and our general focus on smaller classroom sizes than other schools allows us to have the time and focus to accomplish this differentiation well. Most importantly, our “why”, the deep and faith-based care we have for our children and families, drives us to provide the absolute best experience possible for our students. We don’t always succeed in designing perfect differentiation for all students, but we keep trying out of our passion and care for our students, motivated by our response to God’s love for us.