The Mistakes We Make

Although I am inexperienced, I consider myself to be a pretty good teacher. And, although I was scared out of my mind when I was originally asked to teach middle school classes, I have found that I have a special kind of love for the kids in that age group.

They are not easy, though. Teaching middle schoolers requires a type of patience that I don’t always possess (although I do try), and it requires an energy that I’m not always up for (although I do drink a lot of coffee). But I love those kids like they are my own, and, despite how frustrating their nonstop questions and ongoing stories can be, I would do anything for these kids. I certainly would never, ever hurt one of them intentionally.

But good intentions don’t always prevent mistakes, and I made a big one on Monday. We have been doing a big genetics unit in life science; this is a fantastic unit because the kids find it interesting and engaging, and they are usually good at it too. They had done an activity that involved determining the genetic makeup of SpongeBob SquarePants (yes, I guess they still like him at this age) and all of his family members and friends, and we took Monday out of our normal routine to go over the worksheet and make sure that everyone had the right answers and understood why they were correct.

The kids were taking turns answering and explaining, and all of them seemed to be getting the concept pretty well, with the exception of one little girl. Now, this little girl is someone to whom schoolwork does not come easy; but she tries incredibly hard, and she wants nothing more than to please her teachers and her parents. Despite her not-always-perfect grades, she is a kid who I know is learning and is enjoying doing so. Plus, she’s relatively quiet, and she’s sweet, so if I were allowed to have favorites, she would certainly be one of them.

But she was not getting this genetics activity. Something just wasn’t clicking for her. She kept answering the same types of questions incorrectly, but when I corrected her, she assured me she understood. Now, I certainly know that kids will say they understand when they don’t in order to save face in front of their friends, but this is a small and safe class in which I’ve never had a problem like this. Most of the kids are more than happy to raise their hands, ask questions, and admit that they just don’t get what I’m saying.

So I suppose I was getting a little bit frustrated, but more than anything, I was concerned that, if we didn’t figure this thing out, this little girl was going to fall behind. So I asked her once again if she was sure she understood why the recessive trait only shows when there are two recessive alleles present, and once again she told me she absolutely did.

Five minutes later, when I said, “Ok, so, if SpongeSusie has a blue body, which is a recessive trait, what must her genotype be?” I was confident my little girl would get it this time, as I saw the wheels turning in her head. “I guess it would be big y, little y,” she answered incorrectly yet again.

I wasn’t sure what to do to help her understand. There are only so many ways I can explain that, to show a recessive trait, one must have two recessive alleles. I realized that there was some breakdown in the communication between his little girl and myself, so I decided to take myself out of the situation. So I said, “Ok, it seems like we are still struggling a little bit with these concepts, and that’s ok. Maybe I’m not explaining it the way you need to hear it explained. How about if one of your classmates gives us a hand?” And every other hand in the class shot up in the air.

So a nice little boy turned around in his seat and tried to show her on her paper why SpongeSusie’s genotype has to be little y, little y, but it wasn’t going to be of any use because my quiet, sweet, hard-working little girl was in tears.

Luckily, class was almost over; so I dismissed the other kids just a minute early, while I went over to the sobbing child. I gave her a big hug and told her I was sorry if I had embarrassed her and that I hadn’t meant to hurt her feelings or make her feel uncomfortable in front of the other kids, that I was concerned about her and just trying to do what I thought was best to help her understand. “Do you know that?” I asked her. “Do you know I would never, ever do anything on purpose to make you feel bad?”

“Ye…ehh…ehhs,” she said between her sobs, and, although I know she believed me and I believe myself, it was really too late. The damage was already done. Whether I meant to do it or not was irrelevant; I’d gone and made this poor child cry! I can say, with absolute honesty that I have never, in my life, felt so ashamed of myself.

The good news, though, is that middle schoolers are resilient; by the next day, it was clear that it was all forgiven and possibly even forgotten. But I’ve had it on my mind ever since. Even though I know my intentions were pure, my actions were harmful; and I can’t stop feeling horrible.

I had to get it off my chest, so I was talking to another teacher about it earlier today, explaining what had happened and expressing how incredibly awful I felt. After she listened to my story, she told me that the fact that I feel so bad about what happened simply speaks to how much I love my kids. And despite the tears (hey, they’re middle schoolers, after all!), the kids know that.

And she is absolutely right. I need to define my teaching abilities not by what I did on Monday, but by what I do on most days. And that is love my kids with all my heart.

So, little by little, my guilt is subsiding. I know that I didn’t do the right thing in this one instance, but teachers are human (despite what their students may think) and humans make mistakes. I teach in my classroom that mistakes are ok, so long as you learn from them. So that is what I will do – learn from my mistakes and just continue loving my kids the best that I can!