In Pursuit Of More Than Excellence

A couple of nights ago, N was working on a writing assignment.  N likes most things about school but writing is his least favorite thing to do.  He can be a bit of a perfectionist at times, particularly when it come to penmanship.  Writing assignments, consequently, are often long, drawn-out affairs as each letter must be carefully crafted.  Asking him to write four sentences about a book he read is like asking da Vinci to paint the Mona Lisa.  It is an exhausting process, for everyone.

This night was particularly difficult.  Beyond the normal complaints about the sheer amount of work, he was also having trouble finding the right words to express his opinion.  On this account, I could certainly empathize.  I tried to help him work through it, as did my wife, but our efforts only seemed to fuel his frustration.  We left him alone and eventually he finished the task.

Yesterday afternoon I was checking his backpack and I came across the writing assignment.  Across the top, his teacher had drawn a star and written the word "Excellent!".  I complimented him on his acheivement and tried to make some sort of correlation between his hard work and a job well done.  He looked at me and shrugged.  He didn't think he'd done well at all.  Here's the gist of our conversation on the topic:

Me: "Nice work!  Looks like your teacher liked your report."
N: "Not really.  I was worse than half the class."
Me: "Why do you think that?"
N: "Because she just wrote one word at the top."
Me: "Still, the one word was 'Excellent'."
N: "Yes, but sometimes she writes notes to kids, telling them what she liked about what they wrote."
Me: "Well, maybe she was too busy.  She had a lot of these to grade."
N: "Yeah.  Maybe she didn't even read it."

There's another writing assignment due next week.  I can hardly wait.