Creating a “Can Do” Attitude

Difficulties arise throughout the school day, and the school year almost on a daily basis. There’s difficult things to do in class and in school, and teachers expect students to be able to work through those difficulties. But they cannot do it alone. Now I start at the very beginning of the year telling my students that they cannot say can’t. Now that gets a little bit tricky, especially for kids in early childhood, who have learned over the years that it’s so easy to just tell mom and dad, or the teacher previous, “I can’t do it” and then they can give up. Then, that white flag raises in the brain, and says, “I surrender. I can’t do it. That’s okay, I’ll just live life not doing it.” Well not in my classroom, you’ve got to think of other words to replace that word can’t. If you’re having difficulty in some subject, or in some sort of reading activity, or anything in school, I teach my children to say I need your help. I need time, I need to take a breath, I need to take a break, and I can do hard things. There’s a poster in my classroom that says all the things that I expect in my kids, and the most important bulletin point is, “I can do hard things.” As they start to repeat this, and believe in themselves, we’re impressing on our children that they can get through difficult times. That they can do it, and the best lessons learned, are the things that were the hardest for us to do.