Social Emotional Learning: Perfectionism and Doing Work Myself!
Today we read the book Creepy Crayon by Aaron Reynolds, with illustrations by Peter Brown.
In the book, the main character, Jasper Rabbit, is struggling with school work, but then finds a perfect purple crayon that does all of the work for him! Jasper suddenly starts getting top marks on everything!
At first, it feels great, but then the crayon starts taking over Jasper’s life. The crayon even changes work Jasper was already proud of, coming behind him and re-doing everything so it is all in purple and perfect! Jasper feels badly about this, so he gets rid of the crayon and starts doing all of his own work. It isn’t perfect, but he feels much better about it being his own!
After reading the book, we discussed how there are many of us, as advanced learners, who really want all of our work to be perfect all the time. Sometimes as we strive for perfection, we look to outside resources to do the work for us. For example, we might use the internet or artificial intelligence, and ask it to do our work instead of doing our own writing. Or, we may ask others for help, and out of our worry to be perfect, we allow those people to change our work. This means the work becomes more “their work” and not representative of our own abilities.
It is okay to ask for help, but we also need to be willing to work on it by ourselves, because the struggle, the making of mistakes, is when we do our best learning!
I gave the class an example that was kind of silly. Ms. D does not feel “proficient” at soccer (mainly because it isn’t something I have put much thought into, really). But what if, rather than accepting my proficiency, I wanted to appear perfect. So, I hired a student who is amazing at soccer to wear my jersey and represent me on the field. They would do an amazing job, and then afterwards, I would take all the accolades and the trophy! This seemed ridiculous to everyone, and I agreed. If I want to get better at soccer, then I can certainly make some choices to develop my skills!
Also, being better doesn’t mean I need to be PERFECT at it. For example, if I want to be better at soccer, I don’t have to be a top soccer star on the field. I really just want some skills to be able to join friends in a game. So, I can be realistic about what I want in life. It isn’t possible to be top notch in everything. That is okay, because I am going to make the choice of where I want to put my time. I can play soccer with my friends without needing to always win or be the top player.
I shared with everyone this is why I also have them fill out rubrics for self-reflection before I give any feedback. The research shows, people are more likely to follow through on goals they make for themselves, or on their own self-reflection, more than they would follow up on what someone else tells them to do. For example, someone might tell you to clean your room a million times, and you may or may not choose to clean it (generally, I imagine, most of Division 5 doesn’t do this without supervision!) But, if you choose to have a cleaner room because you see the value of having a clean space to work and live and sleep in, well, you are more likely to work on the skills it takes to keep a clean room.
Finally, grade 4 and 5 are great practice years. We can make lots of mistakes because we are learning how to be independent self-managers. Developmentally, we are still working on personal awareness of one another, determining what our interests are, and learning how to make friends. Be willing to make mistakes! And, also know, none of the marks you receive at this point in your learning journey will stay with you when you move on to high school or college. And when you get to my age, no one cares about what you did in high school or college. With time, mistakes are just learning. We always move on from them.
I know, deep thinking for a Monday! I hope everyone takes time to talk about these things at home. More to come on social-emotional thinking in future posts.
Kindly,
Ms. D