Be Bold: My Daughter Corrects Her Teacher
School started this week and my daughter is in fourth grade. She’s a geography whiz. Google Earth should hire her.
Her new teacher made the mistake of teaching that Shanghai was the capital of China. My daughter raised her hand and informed her teacher that it is actually Beijing.
She didn’t ask her teacher if it was Beijing. She told her. That’s bold.
I would have second-guessed myself and looked it up later. I did that a lot in school, unfortunately. I would just take what teacher’s gave me, from facts to grades, and went on with my life. I missed out on a few opportunities to learn and to achieve better grades.
Ironically, in my career, I’m more apt to speak up. In traditional workplaces, this type of behavior is more apt to hurt me as well. Thankfully, Adam is not very traditional.
What motivates people to make such bold corrections?
One of my earliest bold career moves was when I was volunteering for a statewide senate campaign. There were already 6 college interns working on a project to identify political and civic leaders in all of North Carolina’s 100 counties. The problem was that many counties were being checked off as completed when they still had outdated information on them.
I simply took over the project. I didn’t ask for permission. I just did it. All I could think about was how the campaign needed the correct info. I had images in my head of how disastrous it would be if the candidate arrived at an event and didn’t know who the supporters were.
Hopefully, there’s an element of that going on for my daughter. I hope that she’s truly concerned for the education of her fellow students.
In the world of online publishing, things aren’t so black and white. If you want to know what I mean, sit in on a brainstorming session with me and Adam. Design, site architecture, web content, and social media is often based on subjective opinions. It can be difficult to settle on something when there are many options that could work – and work well.
Sometimes that can be the most difficult time to speak up. You don’t have a lot to base your opinion on. For as many examples as you can provide to prove your point, your brainstorming partners may have just as much proof for their perspective. I wonder how many decisions companies are making that are really based on how outgoing, agreeable or persuasive a person is or how senior they are in an organization.
Perhaps that’s where we need to be most bold. Examining the true reasons behind modern decision making and if that stands up to the test of social media and the new conversations in marketing.
What do you think?
So, you didn’t tell us what the teacher’s reaction was. Was s/he willing to park her ego at the door and take the correction?
Yes, I think it’s hugely important to teach our children to speak up (my children, ages 8 and 5, are not yet willing to do this. They are intimidated by adults and groups.). I repeatedly tell them that it is OK to ask questions and/or to request what they need or desire. Waiting for people to intuit this ends up in dashed expectations. Why set other up to fail us? Strength is an important attribute.
I belive the parallel truths to this lesson is that strength must be tempered with tenderness, e.g.
1) You may always respectfully ask, but sometimes the answer is no, and you must respect that anaswer.
2) When we disagree, Dale Carnegie rules. Introductory phrases that let others maintain their dignity such as, Oh, you might be right [that, Shanghai is the capital of China], I was under the impression that [it was Beijing], seem to work best.
I am the bulldozer type, all strength no tenderness, and sometimes forget this second rule myself, but my experience bears that I have more success when I remember to balance my strenth with tenderness.
Regards,
Michelle
Great question – I’m not sure how the teacher reacted. I asked, but my daughter didn’t seem to know.
You’re right in that we probably should teach her some tact. My husband and I were kind of floored. Similar situations happened last year (except the teacher’s knowledge of geography was much worse). My daughter raised her hand but was denied the chance to speak. We had to intervene (the errors were terribly blatant).
At least we did warn the teacher that our kid was really into the subject!