I hung up student writing in the hallway today. It made me so happy to read second graders’ Lab Reports. They are learning how to express their thinking on a whole new level and THAT is very exciting to me.

After I hung up their pieces, I asked them to talk about their work in the hallway. They happily came out and explained their process for both their experiments and their writing. There was such energy, excitement, and happiness. It was thrilling. A security guard walked by, and I said, “Look at this, our second graders wrote Lab Reports!”  He sprinted at the reports proudly displayed and smiled warmly, “That’s great.”  Then, a speech teacher came by… “Check out our second graders’ Lab Reports.” She smiled, and paged through, and remarked on their grasp of sequence and detail.

Are these perfect? It’s not about perfection it’s about purpose. These are amazing because this was a new challenge that the children took head on and they were rewarded with personal satisfaction for all their efforts. I always learn so much from my students… I too want to take on new challenges. I want to be happy with my imperfect attempts and to fix my mistakes with joy not shame. There is so much to learn on the journey and that is the point. It’s the learning, not the “doing” along the way that will get us all to goal.