When Our Girls Challenge Us to Learn

A while back, during one of those delightfully off-topic class moments for which GPS is rightly famous, one of the girls was venting a frustration that was, if I were to be perfectly honest, both candid and completely accurate.

As I recall, she was struggling with learning French. She was convinced that teachers who have been teaching for a while like me (she didn’t say “old” directly, but…) have forgotten what it feels like to be at the beginner stage of learning. In her view, we all assume students will simply absorb each new concept and master the mountain of vocabulary, facts, etc. in a comparatively short time, all on top of all the other things that they have going on. She thought that the length of separation from the student experience probably dulled our appreciation for what goes into the business of first-time learning. I recognized immediately that she had a point and that it was an important one.

So, I made her a deal.

If she would engage fully in her own learning and put in the time and effort, I would commit to learning a new language too.

I promised to put in no more than 15 minutes a day and use only a grammar book and Duolingo. Such was a modest commitment, admittedly, but as the Scottish say, ‘many a mickle makes a muckle’: consistent effort over time can lead to meaningful gains. Full disclosure: I did game things a bit, this not being my first rodeo. The language I chose was Esperanto, a language I started to learn via a (pre-email era!) correspondence course run by the noted Esperantist Cathy Schulze but which I abandoned when Latin and Greek studies cornered my language-learning attention in college.

Since that pre-COVID conversation, on pretty much every day I have had internet access, I have logged in and worked through the Duolingo Esperanto sequence. The language itself is famously approachable, built on a relatively small set of grammatical rules (just 16!) and designed to be accessible to learners from many linguistic backgrounds. But simple does not equate to effortlessness. My student was 100% right about vocabulary; I always want to write ‘helado’ or ‘gelato’ for ice cream instead of ‘glaciaĵo’ and I swear Duolingo’s bird knows it and positively delights in my missteps…

Getting out of the true beginner phase with my Esperanto required patience. It forced me, a notorious pedant and know-it-all, to accept that I will stumble and make mistakes, often repeatedly. It required me to trust in the process and accept that progress in learning is happening even when the gains are seemingly miniscule or otherwise inconsequential. The irony is not lost on me that this is stuff that I say all the time to the girls, of course, but here the ŝuo (shoe) has been on the other piedo (foot). What began as a joke bet made with one girl became something more meaningful, a reminder of a fundamental truth about our learner-centered community.

At GPS, we speak often about cultivating curiosity, building confidence, and encouraging girls to use their voices. We celebrate their resilience, purposeful problem solving, and creative thinking as hallmarks of our Profile of a Graduate. To build those skills in the girls, though, they must also be ours as well as their teachers, mentors, champions, and coaches as we prepare them for that which is to come, whatever that might be.

The girls challenge us daily through their thoughtful questions, perseverance both quiet and performative, and sometimes through candid observations like the one that kicked off my Esperanto journey. When we accept those challenges with openness and humility, we show off that learning is not something that ends with expertise. It deepens because of it. There is something powerful in allowing our girls to see us wrestle with uncertainty and tilt at the occasional windmill. When they see us struggle to recall a fact, botch a point of grammar and then catch ourselves and correct it, or celebrate a victory over something after repeated failed attempts, they witness learning as a living, ongoing process and not as a destination. They see that growth requires risk, effort, and a willingness to buck up, dust off, and try again tomorrow with renewed vigor.

We want that for every GPS student—and always have. Miss Duffy said, “We expect our girls to study, to know they are studying, to rejoice in it, and to learn to think. That is the ideal of GPS.” Miss Jarnagin put it another way: “This is one of the things on which Girls’ Preparatory School has been commended by many girls; we want the girls to know how to study and persevere, for after all, this knowledge is more important than an A.”

We still want our girls to learn to embrace challenges rather than avoid them. We always delight as we see them develop the confidence to ask those questions, the integrity to persist when progress feels slow, and the curiosity to pursue knowledge beyond what is required. And we hope that those habits persist in them for a lifetime; long after they leave Island Avenue, we fervently desire that they never stop learning.

My 15 minutes of Esperanto each day is unlikely to ever progress beyond the hobby stage; it has been years and I have yet to meet a fluent speaker in the flesh. But it renews and strengthens my empathy for our girls as learners every day and deepens my appreciation for the courage required to begin something new and stick with it. It is also a reminder that our girls, their lives, and their experiences can inspire us just as much as we, with patience, guidance, and no small amount of shared effort, hope to inspire them as they grow into lives of integrity and purpose.