Embrace the Mistakes

Reading
Every Mark on the Page by Katie Foley Cusumano

I found this article to be extremely enjoyable.  It was both very informative and very easy to read, which is the best combination.  It deals with a very important issue: writing.  More importantly though, in my opinion, is that it deals with mistakes.  Often times people have the wrong idea about mistakes, especially parents.  This is understandable.  Parents only want the best for their children.  They think that in correcting them, they will help them succeed.  And why wouldn't they?  The mentality that we need to leave mistakes alone is a little counter intuitive, but treating mistakes in this way would change the entire outcome of a child's education.

My teaching philosophy since freshman year has involved what my roommate Elisa calls the Miss Frizzle (of The Magic Schoolbus fame) philosophy: "Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!"  Possibly every parent's nightmare, but an educator (with the right mindset)'s dream.  When students make mistakes, it means that they are taking chances.  They are trying.  This is incredibly brave of them, really.  They are attempting new and difficult tasks every day.  How many adults can say that?  Adults have forgotten what it was like to be children.  Maybe they even blocked it from their memories on purpose.  But we need to understand the scale of what school age children are doing every single day in school.  They are trying to make sense of the world around them - a world that most adults can't fathom not understanding.

So, when kids make spelling or grammar or punctuation errors in their writing and get relentlessly told to correct them, it is discouraging.  They are focused more on conveying meaning at a young age then conveying meaning exactly right.  It is similar to someone who doesn't know very much Spanish trying to communicate with someone who only speaks Spanish.  They might not get the structure or the words exactly right, but it doesn't matter to them as long as they can get their meaning across.

So I take the message of this article deeply to heart.  We need to embrace our mistakes.  We don't need to ignore them - they will have to be dealt with eventually, of course.  But we need to be mindful about when we deal with these mistakes.  And when kids are starting at the beginning and still being brave enough to try this new thing called writing, that is perhaps not quite the right moment.