So, I've fallen down a bit on my exercising and my eating. This past week has been incredibly busy...not that I am using that as an excuse.
Last week we had parent/teacher conferences, Halloween, parent/teacher conferences. By the time each day ended, I was exhausted which resulted in no exercise.
Meals provided at parent/teacher conferences resulted in eating GREAT food, but not following my bubble regimen very well.
On the up side, As of Friday I was down a total of 10 pounds now after 3 weeks. So, I must be doing a little of something right?!?!
What this last week has made me think about is the fact that we all have set backs, we all make mistakes, but we can't let that be what defines us.
This weekend I have been thinking about students and how we relate to them and the expectations we have of them.
Kids make mistakes, kids do dumb things. Do we let that be how we define them or how we think of them?
Specifically I have been thinking about my daughter. She did something really stupid last week. Nothing dangerous, nothing malicious, but stupid. The worst part is she lied about it afterwards when she got "caught"!
I swear, it doesn't matter how many times you tell a kid that if they lie, they WILL get caught and they WILL be in more trouble than if they had told the truth in the first place.
So, she got caught being stupid and then worse yet, she got caught lying about it.
After a LONG discussion about what happened, what should have happened, what she did, what she should have done, how she lied, what she should have said...we had many, many tears.
The ultimate ending of the discussion was the fact that she is a kid. She will make mistakes, she is human, she is normal! We explained that even though she knows what she did is stupid, she will do stupid things again - why? Because she is a kid and kids make mistakes. She can easily see, in retrospect, what she did was wrong and what she should have done. But kids don't think ahead like that, they run with what they want at that moment....normal.
Luckily, we have a great relationship with our daughter and we talked about this very openly. The biggest thing we ended with was that NO MATTER WHAT, we love her. We love her when she makes dumb choices, we love her when she lies, we love her when she makes mistakes....none of that will make us stop loving her.
She's a normal kid. I teach a bunch of normal kids...so I teach a bunch of kids who make mistakes, just like my daughter!
Do we as educators remember that point? That kids are normal and they make mistakes? Do we remember that when we were their age WE made mistakes? Do we allow kids to make mistakes, do wrong things, without judging them?
YES, there are some things that absolutely must be reprimanded. There are some things that we cannot dismiss as kids make mistakes. When it comes to physically or emotionally harming someone, we MUST take a stand. Bullying absolutely cannot be tolerated.
But what about the stupid mistakes that don't hurt someone? Yes, there need to be consequences. Maggie's stupid mistake cost her our trust and letting her do something she really wanted to do. She needed to realize that we take honesty seriously.
So yes, kids need to have consequences. But then we need to allow them to have a clean slate. We need to let those kids move forward and know that their NORMAL mistake will not hang over their head. Kids need to know that every day we have them in class is a new day, no grudges held, no preconceived ideas about what they will do, a totally clean slate.
I messed up last week - but if that is held against me, if I am judged for a mistake that I made, I am more likely to screw up again. You feel like you are expected to make a mistake and we tend to do that then, make the mistake that we think people are expecting us to make.
So can we give our students, our children, the benefit of the doubt? Can we allow them to make the mistakes that we know they will make and then forgive them? Give them a clean slate.
We all make mistakes, we all mess up and we ALL need the chance to redeem ourselves without others expecting us to fail.
I will not fail in my plans because I have a wonderful support system who believes in me and allows me to stumble, allows me to make mistakes, but doesn't judge me. Instead, they pick me up, they help me move forward and tell me they believe in me.
Imagine if our students had that in all of the adults around them - people who believe in them, allow them to stumble, allow them to make mistakes and don't judge them. Then, pick them up and help them move forward with them knowing that we believe in them.
That would make a huge difference in the lives of our students.
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