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02 Jun 2006 - 18:54
a good year
We’re ending the year on a high.
Jimmy has his Marra Award; Andrew is defeating digital timers at school. Better yet, Andrew and I have hit the +1 worksheets in KUMON. He's zooming.
Then there's Christopher. Christopher is fantastic. He’s happy, he's confident, he's in the best shape we've seen, I think. We’re glimpsing the person we hope he’ll be when he’s 16 or 17.
Two weeks ago he came home with a 92 on a science test I hadn’t even known he was taking. His science teacher is very good, but still. A couple of months ago he wasn’t getting As on science tests without help from Ed or me.
Christopher studied for this test on his own. “I quizzed myself,” he said.
He invented a study method, which I think he may have based on rap: “I chanted the answers out loud to myself,” he said. That part, I do remember. I heard him downstairs one night loudly reciting material from a textbook.
What he said next may have been the best part: “I don’t know if it works.”
That was a moment, the beginning of skepticism and humility.
In edu-terms, it was the beginning of metacognition, but I don’t want an edu-term just now.
He’d invented his own special way of studying, and he’d gotten a 92 on the test, and even though he'd done well he knew he'd have to try his method out a few times more before deciding it worked. He knew that he didn't know!
Little kids, when they’re happy, think everything they do is great.
If they’re not happy they think they “stink.” “I stink at science” – a classic Christopherism.
When I was in grad school, one of my professors, who was a fairly well-known avant garde filmmaker, said that the beginning of maturity came when you stopped thinking you were a genius, but also stopped thinking you were nothing. He was talking about age 30, as I recall, but kids must make a similar discovery somewhere in the middle years, too.
We’ve spent the whole year battling Christopher over whether he did or did not know whatever it was he was supposed to be able to do on a test. He would insist he knew the material, we would insist he didn’t, he would insist he did, and invariably the dispute would end in tears and yelling. You hurt my feelings!
6th grade is not easy.
On Mother’s Day, Christopher suddenly looked at me and said, “Thank you for all the extra work you give me, that helps me succeed.”
6th grade isn’t easy, but this has been a good year.
-- CatherineJohnson - 02 Jun 2006
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