I made one of my students cry this afternoon.
Her class was given an assignment for each student to make a ten-second timer, a Rube Goldberg device that performed at least two separate and distinct actions with a total elapsed time that was as close to ten seconds as possible. The student in question came to show me her timer after school because she was embarrassed at how plain and simple hers was compared with the elaborate contraptions of some of her classmates. When she walked into the room, she apologized for the fact that she was “bad at science” and that she “wasn’t creative”.
I couldn’t let those statements go. I asked her if there were things she was good at. (“Yes.”) I asked whether it was OK that someone else might not be good at (or have trouble with) something she was good at. (“Yes.”) I asked whether it was OK for her to not be good at everything. She balked at that until I asked whether it was possible for anyone to be good at everything. Progress.
I asked about potential bad experiences with former teachers or other people in her life who made her feel inferior or like she wasn’t good at anything. (None that she could think of.) Then I asked her whether she felt self-conscious in front of me, like I was going to judge her and I might be disappointed in her. (Averted eyes and slight nod.) So I explained that my job is to take students where they are and take them as far as I can. I won’t judge anyone for where they are, and I would never intentionally make someone feel like they were inferior or make them feel like they had let me down because who they were wasn’t good enough. If she was giving her best, then right then and there she was as good as I could possibly want her to be, and that if there is more that she needs to learn, well that’s what the school is paying me for.
That’s when she looked up at me with tears in her eyes. I handed her a tissue and said, “It’s OK to cry too.”
