Today I had a 4-year-old student who asked me to teach him how to cut. He has been cutting for a while. I think what he really was asking if I would help him. Could I hold the paper and move it around and make it easier for him?
I had to help some kids with their numbers. So, I asked him to give it a try. I watched him as I worked with other kids and gave a little guidance. Learning to cut is hard. You have got to figure out which hand to use, which hole the thumb goes into…and where do all the fingers go? How do you make it go up and down? There are a lot of questions. But you just have to pick up the scissors and give it a try. If it isn’t going well, ask a few questions and get some guidance. Try again.
Cutting is hard, but eventually everyone figures it out. And we learn we can do hard things.
I have heard about new policies being rolled out at places where kids learn. We are going to ask less of our kids. Life is difficult right now. Kids have got to be concerned about COVID and making sure they are wearing their mask. There are probably things going on at home. Parents are stressed. Teachers should ignore poor behavior and missing assignments. We should lower the expectations we have from our kids.
I get it – life is hard right now. We should all be excused from our poor behavior, missing assignments, and have no expectations of each other.
But that would be a very ugly world to live in. We would have people breaking laws without repercussions and rude and illegal behavior on our highways. It could even lead to an insurrection.
What if, instead of excusing poor behavior from our kids, we ask them to meet expectations? What if we challenge them to rise above our expectations? What if we tell them we know life is hard right now, but we also know they are smart, they are capable, and we know they can do hard things?
We will get past this pandemic. We will come out on the other side. The question we need to answer for ourselves, and for our kids, and for our society, is what we want our lives to be like when that happens. Do we want to be people who just got through it with new problems to solve? Or do we want to be people who learned we can do hard things and come out better prepared to take on the next hard thing? Let’s start encouraging our kids not to just survive but thrive during this difficult time. Let’s teach them by our own examples, and by our expectations for them, that they can do hard things. If we encourage our kids to be their best when times are difficult, they will grow up better prepared to do the next hard thing.
