Kindergarten

A few weeks ago I substitute taught a kindergarten class at a private school here in town [maybe I mentioned it here or somewhere?].

Anyways, at one point, we sat down to do journal time where I give them a prompt and then they draw a picture and write a sentence about it.

I can't even remember what my prompt was [it was supposed to do something with the story we read right before].

What I do remember is, as we are drawing, one of the kids picks up his paper, barely written on and says he messed up and needs a new sheet.  I inquire about how he messed up and encourage him to draw around it or draw it into the story, but he starts to crumble it up, while telling me their teacher lets them start over.  Which of course ticks me off.  And I say something like, "well, I'm here today, and while we'll do a lot of things like your teacher does, this isn't going to be one of them".

In the end he crumpled up his paper in a ball, and I had to have a talk about respecting teachers, and when they ask something he needs to do it.  I should have made him draw on the crumpled up sheet.  But I didn't.

I was thinking though, what exactly are we teaching kids with that approach?  Are we teaching them if they mess up they can start all over, and not worry about the first mess up?  I know this is one of those small nit-picky things where it's ridiculous to pinpoint what it really is teaching kids.  But to a certain extent, I think the small things like this do teach kids problem solving skills for the future.

Should we have kids, I want them to know it's okay to mess up, and inevitable that they will mess up.  But they can't just run and get a new paper every time they mess up.  Most times they have to figure out a way to make the mess up okay, or better.  And learn from it so that next time they have a clean sheet of paper they don't make the same mess up.

And hopefully that lesson will expand to all things in life.  You can't always just start fresh.

-mrp-