[00:03.78]Each of us fails from time to time.
[00:07.02]If we are wise, we accept these failures as a necessary part of the learning process.
[00:13.22]But all too often as parents and teachers we deny this same right to our children.
[00:19.32]We tell them that failure is something to be ashamed of, that nothing but top performance will meet with our approval.
[00:27.05]When I see a child subject to this kind of pressure, I think of Donnie, my youngest third-grader，he was a shy, nervous perfectionist.
[00:36.31]His fear of failure kept him from classroom games that other children played with joyous abandon.
[00:42.62]He seldom answered questions — he might be wrong.
[00:46.00]Written assignments, especially math, reduced him to nail-biting frustration.
[00:51.66]He seldom finished his work because he repeatedly checked with me to be sure he hadn’t made a mistake.
[00:57.65]I tried my best to build his self-confidence.
[01:01.03]But nothing changed until midterm, when Mary Anne, a student teacher, was assigned to our classroom.
[01:08.54]She was young and pretty, and she loved children.
[01:11.92]My pupils, Donnie included, adored her.
[01:15.51]But even enthusiastic, loving Mary was baffled by this little boy who feared of making mistake.
[01:22.81]Then one morning we were working math problems at the blackboard.
[01:26.94]Donnie had copied the problems with painstaking neatness and filled in answers for the first row.
[01:33.59]Pleased with his progress, I left the children with Mary Anne and went for art materials.
[01:39.25]When I returned, Donnie was in tears. He’d missed the third problem.
[01:44.91]Mary looked at me in despair. Suddenly her face brightened.
[01:50.76]From the desk we shared, she got a canister of pencils.
[01:54.57]“Look, Donnie,” she said, kneeling beside him and gently lifting the tear-stained face from his arms.
[02:01.87]She placed the pencils on his desk.
[02:04.81]“See these pencils, Donnie?” she continued. “They belong to Mrs. Lindstrom and me.
[02:10.25]See how the erasers are worn?
[02:12.32]That’s because we make mistakes too, lots of them.
[02:16.13]But we erase the mistakes and try again. That’s what you must learn to do, too.”
[02:21.47]She kissed him and stood up.
[02:24.20]“Here,” she said, “I’ll leave one pencil to you so you’ll remember that everybody makes mistakes, even teachers.”
[02:30.86]Donnie looked up with love in his eyes and just a glimmer of a smile.
[02:36.00]The pencil became Donnie’s prize.
[02:38.62]That, together with Mary Anne’s frequent encouragement and unfailing praise for even Donnie’s small successes,
[02:45.40]gradually persuaded him that it’s all right to make mistakes — as long as you erase them and try again.
