Make No Mistakes - November 2009

For the past few years, I have had such a problem with pencils--the pencil sharpener in the classroom was always broken. If it were replaced, it would be broken within hours. Students never have pencils. Last year, I bought a whole ton (about a thousand) of pencils for dirt cheap, and it was just the sharpening that was such a hassle--and what a hassle it was! Students figured out how to take the blade out of the mini sharpeners that we had to use.

Sometimes, I just wanted to pass out pens.

This year, I noticed how they always use pen, and it is a bit annoying. Especially in math class. One day, after the assistant finished giving a long lecture--on using the right notebook, on using the right pen--not a fancy colored pen--I asked her about pencils. Shouldn't they use pencils?

Oh no, she replied.

Why not? I asked.

Because, she said, if they use pens, then they can't erase. It encourages them to be careful and do their work correctly and neatly the first time around.

What?!?

Since then, I've thought about it and decided that it makes no more sense now than it did then. They are FIRST GRADERS, so of course they will make mistakes. And I always tell my students, that if they don't make mistakes, they don't learn--you learn through your mistakes.

And I think my kids are messier because of this whole pen thing. They know they can't do it perfectly, they know they can't fix it--so why try? I have few of the uber-perfectionists that I've had every year in the States--those kids who insist on being absolutely perfect, who wear through their pencil eraser and their paper, who tear up sheet after sheet if it's not perfect. Those kids care about not making mistakes. These kids, using pens so that supposedly they'll care about not making mistakes, don't care.

Then again, those perfectionists drove me crazy. Maybe this pen system is better. It doesn't teach perfectionism, as it wants to do. It teaches, do it and move on. (But, alas, in the all-important Teacher's Journal, it appears to teach 'Cheat! There's no other way!')