I'm trying to curb the unhealthy degrees of perfectionism in my classroom. It's no easy task.

And it's a laughable goal compared to what I was facing in the past. I would have killed for just one good perfectionist in just one of my classes. Was that too much to ask? And now I've got way too many of them.

So I remembered a poem a friend shared with me once. It's a short little ditty by Franz Wright.
I loved this poem the minute I saw it, how it instills a deep sense of comforting grace in its simplicity.

I decided to do an experiment, and I showed it to the class. I had them copy it down in their journals. We discussed what its meaning might be, concluding that he wasn't talking only about baseball, and settling on the familiar paraphrase, "Nobody's perfect." I saw some disconcerted looks and decided to keep asking questions. What's he trying to do here? I asked. One girl explained he was encouraging and comforting us, like when you get a bad grade on a test, it's OK because nobody's perfect.

She was getting it. But nobody else was.

Several kids protested, saying this was discouraging and depressing, and claiming Mr. Wright was destroying all dreams of perfection we've ever had. He must be a cynic! Why try, now that he's told us we can't be perfect?! What's the point?!

Since they were so adamant in believing this, I asked them to edit the poem, making their own version of the poem to improve its message.

Some kids were getting there, adding a line beforehand like, "Always try for perfection, but if you don't make it, it's ok, because..." I can approve of that.

Another kid wrote something like, "Nobody's perfect, but YOU can change that." Yikes. That one I can't approve.

An interesting experiment. I'll let you draw your own conclusions. But it's no wonder we have such a hard time accepting grace or realizing our need of it.