Choosing the right session with the right content, exercises, and challenge level can be a difficult task, especially due to the changeable environment and conditions we work in. To ensure our students continue to learn and develop we need to challenge them, and this may require us to push them outside of their comfort zone.
To do this effectively we need to understand where their comfort zone is, and how far we can actually stretch our students. Knowing our students’ aspirations can help with this.
Most of our students’ longer-term (as well as some shorter-term) goals and aspirations are likely to sit outside their comfort zones. With this knowledge, as well as understanding their current abilities, we can develop our students through the use of ‘stepping stone’ sessions, which over time meet a longer-term objective.