Education- Difficult Work vs. Hard Work

Seth Godin describes the difference between difficult work and hard work in his book Free Prize Inside.

“I define difficult work as the stuff that takes guts or insight. It’s not particularly dependent on how big your budget is or where you got a degree. Designing the profile for the Chrysler Building was difficult. Building it was hard.”

Hard work is about the process.

Difficult work is about the innovation.

Hard	Difficult
Designing comprehensive standards based lesson plans	Deciding what the student needs isn't in the curriculum or the standards and then doing something about it
Taking time to attend grade level meetings	Having meaningful, challenging, questioning conversations about student needs and teaching behaviors
Using technology	Convincing your peers it is necessary element that should be embedded across the curriculum.
Teaching students	Getting students to take accountability for their own learning
Teaching students the right answer	Teaching students to figure out the right question
Letting the principal do all the leadership	Taking responsibility to become a leader
Teaching with the curriculum and materials you are given	Creating the curriculum and materials students need and sharing it with others
Coming up with great ideas and solutions	Being brave enough to take the lead to implement those ideas and solutions
Teaching 30 students in the classroom	Tearing down the wall and teaching 30 students online
Process, skill, best practices, implement	Insight, guts, empathy, innovation, challenge
Hard work can be done poorly	Difficult work can be skipped all together