What Goes Around, Comes Around

A colleague of mine came to visit me in the Media Center the other day and after the usual platitudes the conversation shifted to her class.

Hands in the air and disbelief on her face she said, "You will not believe how little attention these kids pay to directions. I gave them one of those worksheets where the directions tell you to read all the way through to the end and....."

"Just stop," I said, hardly containing a laugh. I was very familiar with the worksheet she'd given to them. "I can believe it. I was that kid."

Yes, those "following directions" worksheets were around 30 years ago when I was in elementary school. I was that kid that couldn't be bothered to read the directions or wait for the teacher to tell me what to do. After a quick scan of the page, I was that was convinced I knew what the task was that I just jumped right in and started working. I wasn't a bad kid, I just wanted to get the task over.

My teacher collected the papers after 5 minutes and handed out treats to those students who had read the directions, turned their papers over and put their heads down. My teacher then thought the same thing my colleague thought last week- that her students just didn't pay attention when they were told to read directions. If only they would pay attention, think of all the learning they could do?

I only made that mistake one time. Once.

That day in fourth grade I left my classroom with a bruised ego but a lesson learned. However, because I was motivated by being correct I learned to read directions carefully. To this day I still mistrust directions that are vague or appear oversimplified.

The truth is that students tend to approach most tasks in similar ways. Students that rush through work because they think it is simply a task to complete will rush through the work. Those students that dilly-dally because the work is hard will continue to dilly-dally. Those students that make careless mistakes will continue to do so until we find what motivates them to do better and reinforce those behaviors. It's not always easy, but it's the job we do.