I love you

Oh, those three, beautiful little words. I must admit, I crave hearing them from my students. Sadly, as I have been slowly climbing the grades in my teaching these past number of years, I've been hearing them less and less frequently. To tell you the truth, I miss it. Oh sure, I see it in their eyes when they look at me. It's obvious. But I want to hear them say it. I want to hear the words coming out of their mouths, but I know they're resisting. Wait. Wait just a second. You don't think I'm talking about...? NO! Not THOSE three words! I'm talking about the three other precious words, I. Don't. Know.

Frustration finally got the better of me a few years ago, so I decided to attack the situation head on and began talking to the children about the beauty of 'I don't know'. Since then, I've made it a point of raising the subject every year. It's always a fascinating discussion for me, because I get to watch my students' expressions change over the course of the five to ten minute talk.

It always starts out the same way. During a regularly planned lesson, I pose a question and choose a person who has her hand raised (note:instead of the politically correct him or her thing, I am going to simply switch back and forth). The person thinks he knows the right answer, but finds out he's erred. I then ask a follow up question to find out what her thinking process was. The result is one of two things: (a) the child then makes up something or (b) I get 'deer-in-the-headlights' eyes staring back at me. Eventually, I ask her if she simply doesn't know the answer. When I get that nod, coupled with the expression of failure, I retort with a declaration that the child had just said something brilliant. I tell the class that no one is expected to know all of the answers asked. I go on to explain that if they knew the answers to everything I asked, they wouldn't be in this grade. 'I don't know', therefore, transforms from being a defeatest proclamation to becoming an appropriate response to a question.

Watching children slowly come around to the notion that they're not disappointing anyone by not understanding something is a beautiful sight. The muscles in their face relax. Sometimes there's an audible sigh. There is always the coy smile. All becomes right with the world. Until, of course, the next time it happens they feel that it's okay not to know something.

Although I do utter my share of I don't know's, I too am guilty of trying to cover up the fact that I'm lost (literally, sometimes!). I think that we resist uttering the words-that-shall-not-be-named because we fear that by admitting not knowing something, we're in fact letting the other person down. We risk losing our perceived Superman status and become boring, ordinary Clark Kent.

So now, let's pretend someone has asked you a question you don't know, or you yourself are in a postition where you don't know the answer. You can do as my students do (and I do...sometimes). You can (a) make up an answer or (b) you can make the ol' deer-in-the-headlights face. There's even a (c). You can pass the buck. Or, there's option (d). You can say, I don't know.

I don't know is a fantastic tool for learning and communicating with others. I don't know opens up discussion. At school when an 'I don't know' comes up, the child(ren) and I will then search for the answer together, be it on the internet, or in a book, or by asking someone else who knows. Together, we arrive at the answer, and ususally discover more questions. Now, I am quite aware that 'I don't know' can be used as an avoidance tactic, but when the option to solve something together arises, avoidance usually goes out the window.

Ann Landers, the great advice columnist, used to recommend that if parents wanted their children (especially teens) to talk to them about what was going on in their lives, the best thing they could do was to do dishes together. Miss Landers was right. Dishwashing is a fantastic leveling tool, because the work is shared equally and the dishes get done. Well, since diswashers tend to do the work for a lot of us, I'm going to offer another suggestion for creating an environment where two people can work together equally. Try saying, I don't know to the other person, and then work together to find a solution.

'I don't know' helps to find strategies to solve homework problems. It becomes a topic of discussion with a friend to find a movie to see on a Saturday night. 'I don't know' causes me to search for new recipes. 'I don't know' frustrates me sometimes, but then it challenges me.

So what am I going to write about next week, you ask? Honestly, I don't know.
Yet.