溫馨夜讀II PART4 2.Permission to Fail

[00:00.30]2.Permission to Fail [00:03.78]Each of us fails from time to time. [00:07.02]If we are wise, we accept these failures as a necessary part of the learning process. [00:13.22]But all too often as parents and teachers we deny this same right to our children. [00:19.32]We tell them that failure is something to be ashamed of, that nothing but top performance will meet with our approval. [00:27.05]When I see a child subject to this kind of pressure, I think of Donnie, my youngest third-grader，he was a shy, nervous perfectionist. [00:36.31]His fear of failure kept him from classroom games that other children played with joyous abandon. [00:42.62]He seldom answered questions — he might be wrong. [00:46.00]Written assignments, especially math, reduced him to nail-biting frustration. [00:51.66]He seldom finished his work because he repeatedly checked with me to be sure he hadn’t made a mistake. [00:57.65]I tried my best to build his self-confidence. [01:01.03]But nothing changed until midterm, when Mary Anne, a student teacher, was assigned to our classroom. [01:08.54]She was young and pretty, and she loved children. [01:11.92]My pupils, Donnie included, adored her. [01:15.51]But even enthusiastic, loving Mary was baffled by this little boy who feared of making mistake. [01:22.81]Then one morning we were working math problems at the blackboard. [01:26.94]Donnie had copied the problems with painstaking neatness and filled in answers for the first row. [01:33.59]Pleased with his progress, I left the children with Mary Anne and went for art materials. [01:39.25]When I returned, Donnie was in tears. He’d missed the third problem. [01:44.91]Mary looked at me in despair. Suddenly her face brightened. [01:50.76]From the desk we shared, she got a canister of pencils. [01:54.57]“Look, Donnie,” she said, kneeling beside him and gently lifting the tear-stained face from his arms. [02:01.87]She placed the pencils on his desk. [02:04.81]“See these pencils, Donnie?” she continued. “They belong to Mrs. Lindstrom and me. [02:10.25]See how the erasers are worn? [02:12.32]That’s because we make mistakes too, lots of them. [02:16.13]But we erase the mistakes and try again. That’s what you must learn to do, too.” [02:21.47]She kissed him and stood up. [02:24.20]“Here,” she said, “I’ll leave one pencil to you so you’ll remember that everybody makes mistakes, even teachers.” [02:30.86]Donnie looked up with love in his eyes and just a glimmer of a smile. [02:36.00]The pencil became Donnie’s prize. [02:38.62]That, together with Mary Anne’s frequent encouragement and unfailing praise for even Donnie’s small successes, [02:45.40]gradually persuaded him that it’s all right to make mistakes — as long as you erase them and try again.

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