Yay! Today was sunny and although I am still a bit bogged down with coughing and various other cold symptoms, I appreciated the sunlight. I went to school for half a day today and came home and slept all afternoon. When my son came home from school he put the heater on, but I thought it was already, cause I was so hot! My parents called tonight to say they should be home tomorrow. Mum can make me chicken soup then and I will be all better in no time! The tulips Andy planted a couple of years ago from me have multiplied and are about ready to flower. I am so glad we are heading for summer.
The only responses to my plea on Myspace were from students not in my English classes to say ‘Hi’. Many of my students had a learning experience today. They didn’t meet the challenge. The annoying thing was that quite a few of them had read the books and not yet got around to entering them. I made a conscious choice not to remember all the books I’d seen them reading and enter them all for them if they were year 9 students. I had a bit of a rant about it today with the worst offenders in my year 9 class (who have been through this process at least twice already) and when I said I took part responsiblity for being away for a few days last week with PD’s and illness, one of them disagreed with me. He said, it is our responsibility, we knew about it. I was very impressed and pleased to know that at least one of them will learn from it. Most students in this category though seemed to look regretful and I was pleased to see that and not because I’m a sadist.
We try too hard as teachers and parents to make young people successful at the things they attempt. Teachers track down and chase students for work, parents cajole their children to do the right things. It can prevent them from having the kinds of learning experiences I mentioned before. If they don’t get the chance to make a few mistakes and experience the consequences of them, they have a false perception of success and possibly don’t feel a sense of achievement. If all mistakes are opportunities to learn, which I believe they are, then you need to be able to make them without some concerned other rushing in and making it right for you. It’s hard to resist doing that sometimes, but possibly inhibits real growth.
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I often give my students permission to fail – they are so intent on achieving that they forget that they are learning. I have tried to instill this in my student teacher as well – she is trying to over achieve…..thanks for the post. Hope you feel better soon…..
Hope the soup sees you recovering quickly. I think that it is one of the hardest things to do is to watch children make mistakes, but they do really need to do this. Children need to start learning to make decisions and feel the consequences of them on a small scale and gradually increase, so that they fully mature into an adult with inner discipline and self control.
I’ve learned more from my failures than my successes … especially when I think back to my days in school. But just life in general … failures are essential otherwise you never learn and grow. It’s a good time for reflection and growth … we shouldn’t rob people of that.