Teaching: Beautifully Imperfect

-by Leslie Lucas, Hoggard HS

In the middle of July, it’s easy to imagine that we’ll be perfect teachers with perfect plans. Our students will be perfect students with perfect attitudes. They’ll have zest, grit, and growth mindsets.  And to top it off, we’ll  be able to make as many copies as we want. I call it July bliss. The July bliss before the August abyss. The calm before the storm.Literally.

And, if we’re wise, we know before the end of the first day back to school that we aren’t perfect, our kids aren’t perfect, and even though we don’t have unlimited copies, we have enough...most of the time. Most importantly, we and our students are enough.

And if we’re foolish, we continue to strive for perfection and end up perfectly discontent. Author Anne Lamott claims, “Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.” My worst teaching days have been when I expected perfection from my students and me.

Those summer composed plans do have value if they are designed to contour to the students’ needs, but in the middle of July, I didn't know Michael’s needs. I didn't know he’d be sixteen years old with an elementary school reading level. I didn't know he'd be disruptive starting day one. I went through the motions with the warnings, phone calls home (two in the first week), the documentation I knew I would need on his third strike. We didn’t even make it to the end of the first week before I was ready to call him out.   

Thank goodness for three day weekends.  

The weekend gave me time to realize that I was insecure about my ability to teach him. I also learned that Michael is a Kobe Bryant fan.  So tomorrow is a Kobe Bryant day in honor of Michael. They’ll watch a clip of Bryant’s last three minutes of playtime, then they’ll see another side to him as they listen to Bryant perform his retirement poem and watch the animated film to the tune of an orchestra conducted by John Williams.

I’m hoping Michael will be game to seeing another side of himself, too. Striving for perfection would never have allowed me to extend grace to Michael and to myself for being so imperfect.  

I gravitate now to the resources that value the imperfection and mistakes that lead to remarkable writings and projects. Rethinking Rubrics in Writing Assessment by Maja Wilson challenges the necessity to provide rubrics to those students who are so grade-driven. Their need to complete the task and land in the right rubric box can supersede taking the risks that lead to deeper learning. The rubric driven writers miss the kind of writing Flannery O’Connor applauds. O’Connor describes her purpose for writing this way: “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” Students are anxious when I ask them to write with a pen instead of a pencil. They want to erase mistakes. I want them to be secure enough to make mistakes.

Other books that promote the “epic failures” that lead to growth include Launch and Empower, co-authored by John Spencer and A.J.’s Juliani, the gurus of inquiry projects. Inquiry projects can get a bad rap because of those teachers who partially launch them. I know because I’ve been one of those teachers, a partial launcher who has empowered some of the kids some of the time. Stands to reason then that I’ve loved teaching some days more than others.  

But this year I aim to love teaching all days. I will purposefully empower my students and get the heck out of their way. My students and I will make a lot of mistakes, but I choose grace over perfection.