Telling kids its okay to be weird or to fail. The coddling has gotten ridiculous and gone too far.

I'm a teacher. I love children. I understand the need for support, etc. Those messages of acceptance are overstated and misinterpreted.

I asked one of my students today to close the door. I had opened it to let some air in. It's a pretty simple door, no tricks at all. The doorstop is a simple lock when it opens fully and you just give it a tug to disengage it. Definitely within the abilities of a 7 year-old. A toddler could handle it. Especially since the door is weighted to close.

I asked a student to do it because a) kids love doing things for you and it makes them feel special, b) this kid needs the opportunity to feel included and can't handle any other 'jobs' that I let kids do, c) I was doing small group instruction and didn't want to leave them in the middle of it, and d) fuck you I'm lazy.

I asked him to close the door, and he somehow confused a pointed finger and "please close the door" with "please go push the open door more open."

Now I'm very clear and I enunciate as precisely as possible. It's kind of important when I'm teaching phonics and building crucial vocabulary. But fine, maybe he didn't hear.

He goes to the open door and pushes it more open, even when it won't push any farther because it's been pushed as wide as it can go. He continues to push. I repeat my instructions but at this point he's outside the room, so maybe he couldn't hear me. His classmates, seeing that he is misunderstanding, start calling out to him to correct him (in a kind way).

He probably pushes that fully open door for a full 10 seconds. I really do mean that. Not 10 seconds meaning "a moment longer than necessary" but actually 10 seconds. Count out 10 mississippi's and imagine a child pushing a door into a wall for that amount of time before figuring out that it shouldn't be pushed into a wall.

His classmates try to correct him. One kid says that I said to close it. Repeats it a little louder, a little louder, then a little louder again. More kids join in, each thinking they can be the correct amount of 'loud' for him to hear. I give them a 3-count (holding up 3 fingers letting them know to be quiet by the time I get to 0) and walk over to him.

Now I'm not sure if he actually tried to close that door, or if he just kept trying to open it. But when I got there, it took a light tug to pull the door past the locking mechanism and begin to swing shut. The same kind of tug that a small child gives with a few fingers to the back of their mom's pants to get their attention.

So he is walking back to his seat and I'm slightly incredulous but this isn't the first time this student in particular has made me re-evaluate his capacity for stupid. I'm not sure if another student said something to him or if he was talking to himself. He talks to himself a bit.

But I do hear his next words, which are, "Well, I tried."

I think the message that he is repeating was one where a parent, counselor, or former teacher told him that it's okay to fail as long as you try your best, that failure is okay if you succeed next time, etc. But only part of that message gets through and people focus so much on reassuring kids that it's okay to fail, the rest of the message falls by the wayside.