I love my grandchildren's writing, especially when they are first learning to write. These are recent pages my daughter sent from our five-year-old grand-daughter, Shannon. She's in kindergarten.
I love the sentiment. I love the images accompanying the text. I even love the misspellings as they are evidence of learning.
I wonder, though, as teachers, when we stop being charmed by evidences of learning, when we stop seeing errors as the writer taking risks and start seeing the errors, instead, as wrong. As mistakes. As bad writing. Could I correct Shannon's spelling? Of course. But why would I? I don't mind that she spells my name with an o at the end instead of an a. I know her. I know that she's thinking of one of the sounds an o can make. (She's kind of a stickler for letters making the sounds she knows and doesn't like it at all when letters make different sounds in some words.)
Loving the notes and letters my grandchildren send me reminds me that we are all learners. Do I sometimes have to hold students to a standard? Yes. But not every time they write. And sometimes, even in polished writing, I should probably look at some of what my students do as risks they have taken, as their attempt to address something I may not understand, as evidence of learning in process. I should think of them as people. If I do that, I take a more human perspective. And, in the end, I might take more risks in my own writing, maybe giving myself the same freedom to take risks and try something that I might not be really good at. I hope so, anyway.
