Error correction – Scott Thornbury

What are errors & how should we deal with

them in our classes?

– Scott Thornbury
When I first started teaching the answer to these two questions was clear and un-
problematic. What are errors? They are any departure from standard English. How
should we deal with them? We should correct them lest they become ‘bad habits’.

Subsequently, these two questions have become the most difficult, problematic and
mysterious of all questions related to language teaching.

What are errors? We simply don’t know any more. Why? Because there is no agreed
upon standard by which to measure learners’ output. For a start, there are so many
varieties of native speaker English (both spoken and written) that it’s impossible to
decide if a sentence like ‘I can’t get no satisfaction’ is ‘wrong’ or not. On top of that,
many learners are not interested in speaking ‘native speaker’ English anyway.

What should we do about errors? Research suggests that correcting errors has only
an accidental effect on accuracy, and that many so-called errors (like failure to add –s
to present simple third person singular verbs, as in she work) are an inevitable stage
of language learning, and are extremely resistant to correction. On the other hand, if
we don’t correct errors we may send out a message that accuracy doesn’t matter,
which may threaten the long-term language development of our learners. Also, we
need to be aware that excessive correction can be very de-motivating for many
learners, while not to correct errors will make us look incompetent in the eyes of oth-
er learners.

In short, errors, and the way we handle them, are an enormous puzzle, and I would
be fascinated to know how you deal with this puzzle yourself.

Scott

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PUBLISHED BY

Scott Thornbury
Scott is a teacher and teacher educator, with over 30 years' experience in English language
teaching. He is currently Associate Professor of English Language Studies at the New School in
New York, teaching on an on-line MATESOL program. His previous experience includes teach-
ing and teacher training in Egypt, UK, Spain, and his native New Zealand. Scott’s writing credits
include several award-winning books for teachers on language and methodology including The
A-Z of ELT, How to Teach Grammar and Teaching Unplugged. He is series editor for the Cam-
bridge Handbooks for Teachers (CUP) and was also the co-founder of the dogme ELT group,
whose archived website, called Teaching Unplugged, can be found below. Scott currently leads a
fascinating community at the popular and thought-provoking blog, A-Z of ELT blog. Scott is lead
author in the iTDi Teacher Development program as well as being iTDi's Academic Director.
View all posts by Scott Thornbury 

 August 7, 2013  Scott Thornbury  Classrooms Correction and Critical Thinking, Error correction,
Summer Sampler 3

35 thoughts on “Error correction – Scott Thornbury”

phil wade
February 19, 2012 at 5:37 pm

Hi Scott,
One of the courses I teach is discussion/debate and as students allegedly learn or
have learnt English online and had grammar lectures, the course is supposed to be
speaking-based. I tried doing my usual dogme ‘language focus’ but it didn’t go down
well, I also don’t have any boards, just a projector and a wall. Thus, I started fo-
cussing on error correction and supporting language creation but with an emphasis
on helping students put across their ideas, not on saying something is wrong. Now,
there’s a lot of peer support and if I correct something once and the student reof-
fends the others pick up on it.

As I said, it is a discussion and it has evolved into me acting like an orchestra conduc-
tor in a way. Sometimes pair work, group work or even a debate seems appropriate,
other times just a class discussion seems to work. Whatever the format, because I am
interested in creating real conversation with ideas, opinions and views, however
controversial, error correction is welcomed and often asked for. I’m also now the
‘last resort’ in a way after self-correction and peer.

Scott
February 20, 2012 at 9:47 am

Thanks for the comment Phil. It sounds like you have created the optimal ‘learning
environment’, at least insofar as errors go. When the classroom becomes a kind of
‘self-healing’ organism, with the teacher as last resort, you have a really potent con-
tent for ‘scaffolded’ risk-taking.

Matthew Noble
December 31, 2015 at 12:05 am

I *love* the image of class/classroom as ‘self-healing’ organism, scaffolding risk-

taking!

Georgina
February 19, 2012 at 11:44 pm

I’ve recently came across an approach that deals with errors similar to Kolb’s exper-
ential learning cycle. It takes time, but it allows the learner to reflect on errors and
avoid making them again.

sv
February 20, 2012 at 9:13 am

I would be interested to hear more about this. Do you have a link to a site?

Scott
February 20, 2012 at 9:54 am
 Yes, I’d be interested, too.

Matthew Noble
December 31, 2015 at 12:10 am

It’s years later, but I’m wishing for a miracle…and a link! What it makes me
think of is this, anyway: http://bit.ly/1TqBmCT which is the framework into
which I tend to place the role of corrective feedback in learning.

Kristin Walters
February 20, 2012 at 7:49 am

Not only is this area a huge puzzle, (spoken) errors (and their correction) are also
things that a teacher has to be able to make almost instantaneous decisions about in
the moment of teaching….do I correct it or not? why is it wrong, what is correct in
this context/instance?, what level is the learner and how much do they know / can I
‘push’ them here? how do i correct it? now or later? how is the learner going to feel?
– all these thoughts and decisions have to be answered in the moment, and that’s
pretty overwhelming.
As much as I’d like to say I have a principled approach that is based on my aware-
ness and consideration of these issues, it often isn’t
I might deal with errors just as I might deal with communication breakdown with
other (native) speakers e.g Sorry, did you mean…? or What do you mean? at times,
and at other times I make sure there is a stage of the task/lesson that deals with inac-
curacies that were heard.
I’d like to believe that this is a very eclectic approach that attempts to focus on learn-
er needs, and the dynamics of the class
K

Scott
February 20, 2012 at 9:50 am

Thanks for the comment Kristin. I guess we all like to think our approach to error
correction is ‘principled’, but as you say, in the heat of the moment, it’s very diffi-
cult to juggle all the factors – cognitive, affective, cultural etc – that impact on how
we deal with errors that arise in spontaneous talk. Perhaps that’s where teaching is
more an art than a science.

Smita C
March 25, 2012 at 8:18 am

For me, a combination approach has always helped. Understanding learning situ-
ations and the learner mix is extremely important to the teacher. I’m sure most
teachers agree that it s much easier to provide explicit feedback to younger learn-
ers. An indirect approach is better whilst handling a class of upper intermediates
or adults.
 Errors that come in way of communicative competence cannot be compromised
or ignored. Errors in accuracy can probably be handled in indirect manner in-
volving the rest of the class in diagnosing and correcting the errors

Pingback: Purposeful communication « Doing some thinking

Ed Pegg
February 21, 2012 at 10:23 pm

A colleague of mine talks a bout three types of error – accuracy, intelligibility and
irritation.

Accuracy means correcting just because it’s not correct. He feels these should be left
alone, particularly if the learner’s meaning is clear.

He mainly feels you should only correct when the error makes it difficult to under-
stand the learner.

Most interesting is his ‘irritation’ class. If he feels the error irritates native or ad-
vanced speakers, he corrects it.

I like this idea but am also wary about who decides what irritates

Karl
February 22, 2012 at 3:34 am

Has there been any sudies that shows when you leave an accuracy error alone (for
example 3rd person, present +s) the learners actually self corrects over time
through just exposure (reading & listening) to correct language from the teacher of
other materials / sources?

Leo
February 28, 2012 at 11:39 am

Hmmm I haven’t heard of any such studies but it’s something I’d be curious to
see. Mind you, it would be very difficult to operationalize such a longitudinal
study with two groups of learners.

Scott
February 23, 2012 at 10:48 pm

Thanks Ed – I like your (or your colleague’s) classification, particularly the ‘irrita-
tion’ category. I think we do owe it to our students to indicate the errors that are
likely to alienate their interlocutors. I distinctly remember a Spanish teacher I had
who told me, almost from day one, that she was driven crazy by learners saying
 ‘una problema’ instead of ‘un problema’. It made such an impression that I very
rarely make that mistake!

Brahim
February 21, 2012 at 10:28 pm

I agree with you Scott in saying that error correction is one of the most problematic
areas of language teaching.Hundreds of articles and book chapters are written about
this area of ELT.

I am always puzzled as to wether I should correct a student’s error or not as I have

many cases where this correction certainly had side-effects or counter-productive re-
sults.
now,I always take some time in the beginning of the school year so that I know some-
thing about the personality of my students before I start directly or even indirectly
correcting their errors.I have discovered- and most educators might have seen this as
well-that some students are too fragile and they might react in a way too personal to
the teacher/other student’s correction/feedback on their errors.

This doesn’t mean that some errors shouldn’t be corrected.In cases where error cor-
rection hurts,I have resorted to “let it to another day” or delayed error correction;in
other words,if I see that a students keeps making the same error ,I find a way to cor-
rect the error when he/she is not aware that I am referring to him/her.I sometimes
feel that if the student is nor corrected on the spot,he/she wouldn’t be aware that
he’s:she’s making that mistake/error.I have found this ,however,better than switch-
ing off a student once and for all.

Another poin I would like to make is that how much correction really happens when
we correct a student’s error.I am not aware of the existence of any research about if
correcting an error is really what “corrects” the student’s error.I suppose that so
many errors get corrected along the way without the teacher’s intervention;and this
is where other language skills play a great role.I strongly believe that extended read-
ing and writing have a major role to play in chaning a student’s misconceptions of a
language item.I am getting pro comprehensible input -krashen- here;and I really
agre with the hypothesis that sports Krashen “comprehensible input” theory.

Talking about L1,how much error correction do our mothers/fathers do while we are
learning our first language?I have a one year old baby now – and already another
oen before him- and I have not noticed myself or his mother correcting our baby’s er-
rors;and yet so many sentnces emerge at an early age.It might be a school fashion
then to correct errors,which no one is aware that they are really corrected that way.I
suppose that creating the L1 conditions in L2 or FL learning is what really needs to
be taken into consideration.

Much language learning happens exactly the same way as other learning”(s)” about
life do.Children learn language by observing an older person around them,that ob-
servation involves listening to him/her and trying to emitate him/her.This might ex-
plain why so many “family/tribe” “errors” continue and resist change despite
school’s correction.I am here referring to black English that might be corrected by so
many teachers in school and yet it continues to evolve and distinguish itself as a dis-
tinct language.I have also witnessed cases where some of our students exchange the
/l/ and /r/ sounds and they never orrect them despite our efforts and sometimes the
sarcasm of other peer students.

So many misteries remain untapped by research,and language errors continue to be

a mystery.

Maria
February 23, 2012 at 8:33 pm

The question then arises is there a way to examine implicit focus on form affects
linguistic accuracy of a group of EFL learners, written production of language pro-
ficiency in comparison with another group receiving delayed, explicit focus on
form at the same level of language proficiency?.Are there any statistically signifi-
cant differences between Explicit teaching and Implicit teaching when teaching the
usage of grammar?

Scott
February 23, 2012 at 10:30 pm

Thanks, Brahim, for your comment. I think that what you say here gets to the heart
of it:

“I am not aware of the existence of any research about if correcting an error is re-
ally what “corrects” the student’s error.I suppose that so many errors get corrected
along the way without the teacher’s intervention;and this is where other language
skills play a great role”.

I think it’s probably a case of both – that is to say, some errors are susceptible to the
teacher’s intervention, while others just resolve themselves over time and through
exposure and practice. The problem is, the constellation of ‘correctable’ errors and
‘non-correctable’ errors will very from learner to learner, so maybe – as a safe bet –
we should correct more often than not, in the hope that at least some of our correc-
tions will hit the target. Just a thought.

Karl
February 22, 2012 at 3:30 am

One of my approaches is very similar to Phil Wade’s. I always encourage collabora-

tion & wide open commumnication channels in my classes & part of this is peer – to
peer error correction and improvement. Taken from your ‘unlpugged teaching’ book,
I prefer to use the word unsuccessful language and improvement” rather than error
or mistake. One of my favourite tasks is one from your book, where I make a list of
utternaces (successful and not) and the learners must discuss each one and try to lo-
cate any unsuccesssful language, correct it and then also improve the utterance (if
possible). I also find that a good method is getting the learners to produce and deliv-
er mini-lesson & tasks on the area of language that is causing them problems – this
works better though when it deals with something tangible like a piece / area of
grammar.
Karl

Scott
February 23, 2012 at 10:34 pm

Thanks, Karl, for your comment – and thanks for mentioning that activity from
‘Teaching Unplugged’. I had a class who told me that one of the activities that they
really liked was just going through a list of errors I had collected from a previous
lesson, or from their homework – all anonymised – and working on correcting
them. Something satisfying in getting things right, especially when there’s no threat
to one’s public ‘face’.

Steven O'Donnell
February 22, 2012 at 10:43 am

The main errors I find students all over making are: failure to add -s to the third per-
son (as discussed previosly), incorrect preposition use, and failure to use the past
simple (what i call the ‘yesterday i go’ syndrome).
It seems to me that these errors are mostly the result of a) lack of self-awareness and
b) – something which i feel is grossly overlooked – the fact that the correct form WAS
NEVER TAUGHT IN THE FIRST PLACE. In this case, how can we expect our students to
get it right?
Let’s take the third person singular ‘-s’. When I studied French and German at school,
a great deal of time was spent learning to conjugate the verbs. Now, in English, be-
cause only the third person singular is subject to an ending being added, students are
never taught how to conjugate verbs in the present simple (or any tense for that mat-
ter). It seems it is our general practise to merely *tell* our students “oh, and don’t
forget, when you’re talking about he or she, you have to put an ‘s’ at the end”. Of
course, the student nods, more or less understands, BUT CRUCIALLY HASN’T PRAC-
TISED AND THEREFORE HASN’T LEARNED IT.
Clearly this is a mistake in our approach as it sends out a message to students that
the ending doesn’t matter, that verbs don’t have endings, students of course subse-
quently don’t practise this hence the mistakes they make.
Therefore, I make a point of focusing just on third person ‘s’ on a regular basis hope-
fully so these kind of mistakes don’t become embedded.
I give a prompt such as ‘Right, SS A, He – Want – Question’ to which the reply should
be ‘What does he want’ I then drill this with other verbs. Then I might change it to
‘Give me a question with ‘who’ and ‘know’ by which I’m trying to elicit “Who
knows?” or “Who knows where i can find a good shoe shop in this town?”
OK, so these drills are not exactly pretty, tend to be teacher-centred (although you
can get them to do it in pairs as well) but they are crucial.
 Scott
February 23, 2012 at 10:45 pm

Interesting comment, Steven. I think you’ll find that there are many teachers out
there (I was one!) who have definitely TAUGHT the present simple -s, in the sense
of having presented it, drilled it, practised it, corrected it – endlessly – and still stu-
dents resist using it. This is fairly well attested in the literature on second language
acquisition – certain grammatical structures simply resist teaching. Why?

Take the third person -s. How many good reasons might there be for students NOT
to learn it?

1. It consists of one sound and one letter – difficult to perceive, compared to, say,
the ‘-ing’ ending, which is typically learned much quicker.
2. It’s redundant, since in English we always state the subject of a verb, even if it’s a
pronoun, so we know that ‘he work’ refers to ‘he’. Why flag the third person twice?
3. The -s ending indexes the plural in many languages, including Engish – so it
seems odd to add it to a singular verb.
4. In many Latin-based languages, the -s ending, if added to a verb, signals the 2nd
person (tu hablas) not the 3rd person, so, for speakers of these languages, it is coun-
terintuitive.
5. In many regional versions of English, it is not used.

So, for all these reasons, the -s ending in the third person singular present tense
verbs is VERY difficult to acquire, and resists both teaching and correction.

Matthew Noble
December 31, 2015 at 12:21 am

On the topic of the 3rd Person Singular -S, AKA the “little despot”! –> http://bit.-
ly/1RSbRwo I focus on it most when/if I know my students are going to a US uni-
versity, etc. and will have many NS interlocutors. I can’t get those “baby-talk”/”un-
educated” quotes out of my mind..and want my students to avoid it having
thought about them wrongly!

Ratna
August 8, 2013 at 6:07 am

Dear Scott,
The term error correction can be quite a grey area as you mentioned. What is error?
Are we talking in terms of grammatical errors, wrong usage of words, pronunciation
errors or…..? The list can go on and on and be overwhelming.
I usually set specific focus, rather than addressing the different errors together. For
example, when working on a particular grammar tense (like the past tense), my fo-
cus would be on giving feedback on the appropriate usage of past tense (either by
means of monitoring peer feedback or addressing the error as a class), whereas
when working on a writing piece,I would then focus on meaningful connectivity aka
cohesion in text.

I find that a purposeful sense of focus during error feedback sessions really help.
Learners themselves are able to work slowly, step by step, in areas that need im-
provement, rather than being bombarded with torrents of feedback that , in the end,
leads them to feel flustered and demotivated.

As Anne Lamott says “bird by bird, buddy, just take it bird by bird”…..:)

Rgds,
Ratna

Wayne Duplessis
August 18, 2013 at 12:49 pm

Errors are wonderful windows. They give the teacher a way into the thought process-
es and speed bumps of language acquisition.
Why do students make the same errors over and over?
Is it a lack of knowledge, or is it previous knowledge?
L1 influence can really frustrate the learning but it does show that critical thinking is
happening.
Here in Indonesia it’s quite common to hear the statement, “I have ever been to Bali.”
It can be a frustrating error until a teacher(and the student) realize that the Indone-
sian sentence,”Saya sudah pernah ke Bali.” doesn’t translate directly into English as
we shouldn’t use ever(pernah) in statements. This gives the teacher a way to make
general corrections. L1 is only one of many reasons for errors.
My long way to answer the question. Error correction is a dance, requiring the
teacher to have an awareness of their surroundings and a certain nimbleness in
their steps.

jill
February 25, 2014 at 12:02 pm

That Scott, ‘e know ‘is grammar ”e do.

Norwich style!

Andrew Weiler
March 6, 2014 at 9:58 am

As Wayne says, errors are a great window. However we frame what we see in terms
of our understandings. If you don’t know what a car is, seeing it from that window
will not shed much light on the subject. You have got to get out there!

From my experience and understandings errors can be caused by one of the follow-
ing factors..sometimes even a mix!
– ignorance ( the person just does not know)..this needs to be sorted out by the
teacher before one can know what to do next
– lack of attention ( person knows and could self correct,but has not automated the
usage yet, so if his/her attention is caught somewhere else, mistakes like that can eas-
ily happen when one is learning) – this can easily be sorted out by the teacher
– has half an understanding, so the mistake is made by the learner trying to clarify
(teacher can also help out here by establishing what is known)
– the learner knows but does not really care if they get it wrong, so they pay insuffi-
cient attention ( or none) to get it right. Sometimes this can be seen as the learner be-
ing unwilling to pay the price to do what they know needs to be done.

( there may be more, but it’s getting late! )

aziz
August 14, 2014 at 1:40 am

I would venture saying that errors are an integral part of language learning. Students
will keep making more or less the same mistakes despite our constant and regular
correction .The whole operation is happening inside that is for learners to get it right
,the brain should “kicks in” as it has been said by Azar. Simply put, They should be
aware and conscious of it to avoid it later on. And I personally noticed that in class. It
is more or less like a battle and too much correction as you have mentioned is very
de-motivating indeed. Teachers tend to correct too much because they are pedantic
and some even trying to be perfect .Since we are talking about errors, there are some
scholars who advocate zero grammar teaching .What’s the point of teaching it if stu-
dents keep making the mistakes .”It is like saying we plant seeds, but not all seeds
come up .Therefore, it is no use planting seeds”.

Judith Moya
August 14, 2014 at 4:55 pm

I’m 100 per cent agreed with you; errors just exist and are a very challenging puzzle
even for the greatest teachers. In my case, particularly, at times I correct mistakes
just by showing the write way (formal instruction), others I decided my students to
correct each other nicely of course, because some students tend to be so critical and
rude. I also have an audio/video record of my students’ activities and show them af-
ter a while so they can correct themselves, as I wrote time ago, sometimes they just
have a memory or language lapse, so I give them the opportunity to see their own
mistakes and correct them. When it is about written assignments I use to highlight
mistakes and talk about them in class, and to my surprise, most of the times students
have already done a bit research about what and why I highlighted some things in
their papers. One of my career teachers said that we should correct students’ mis-
takes by giving points and after having many bad points maybe they will get it and
not continue to make them. I’m not so sure this is the best or even worthy of consid-
eration way, but I do know that if you highlight many times the same things, students
will notice and do something on that regard. Finally I can say that every time mis-
takes appear –and they certainly will, we, as teachers, will need to figure out how to
deal with them the most suitable and less troublesome way.

Inna
September 2, 2014 at 6:47 pm

No to hurt my students, I never interrupt my students while they are speaking. After
they finish, I first point out the good parts of their speech and then mention their ma-
jor mistakes and explain the correct way to say it. Sometimes I ask the group what
they liked about the speech or the presentation and whether they have noticed any
mistakes.
When my students write essays I always analyze mistakes in class without giving the
name of the authors.

michelle hofmann
September 10, 2014 at 3:42 am

In coming to teacher later in life, I think many instructors fear an error, but students
have the same fear. “Oh, my, what if I make a mistake in front of all these people.
How will it appear?” I tell the students that it makes us all appear the same — hu-
man. In teaching journalism and writing, I see so many broken rules. In many cases,
the rules are made to be broken. But I feel that we need to be able to build with the
basics before we can branch out and start inserting a fragment here and there. So I
really work with the students on basics. In class today, I had turn in their lead home-
work. I reviewed every lead on the board. Had any of them read the work out loud,
they would have heard the errors. Again and again, I asked the students what words
I should/could change to make the narrative clear. After that, I asked them to rewrite
the lead in class, within 10 minutes. We reviewed there too. No names. Just the
words. But they learn. On one level we need mistakes and errors to learn. If we hide
from them or cover them or run from them, we’re just screwed. If I make a mistake, I
own up. So what? Who cares? I try my best to never defend when a student points
out an error. I tell student I’m glad I am still making mistakes; it means I am still
growing. I realize now that fear was the failing of many of my college professors.
They were terrified of being seen as not knowing or being in error. When I was in
college, I just thought they were being coy or brilliant or something, I don’t really
know. Now, I realized many of them were terrified. That’s such a shame. I tell my stu-
dents to leave their egos at the door. Anything that is born from ego is based on fear
and only hampers progress. I too leave my ego at the door and always ask that the
universe and the great scholars who came before guide me and help me stand at the
threshold. It sounds silly, but it seems to work. Holy cow, I just realized this error
blog could be about something else. I could be in error. Oh, well, never mind. Live
and learn.

Ian
October 31, 2014 at 3:13 pm

I always start a course by inviting and encouraging lots of mistakes, as a sign that
students will be trying to communicate in ways they have not yet perfected, which is
crucial for progress.

So after a discussion between students, I will introduce my notes saying “Thank you,
lots of wonderful mistakes!”

Later I introduce a distinction between old and new mistakes, encouraging the latter.

With a student who can take it, I will interrupt them when they make of the serious
fossilized errors we have previously identified, but otherwise leave it till later.

Last comment: when bringing to class a list of previous errors, as Scott mentions, I
find it can help to “camouflage” them by changing non-essential words. That way
sensitive students aren’t sure if any given error was theirs, especially if they were all
writing on a similar topic.

Pingback: Error Correction: a Critique | English Language Teaching

Jenny
January 20, 2015 at 6:04 am

Ha!ha! Just last Saturday my 8-9 year old language students found an error in their
textbook! I was so pleased. I congratulated them and told them to cross out the
wrong word and replace it with the correct one. The error (gasps!) “You ‘eat’ soup
from this”. They immediately shouted out that you cannot eat soup, you drink it.

Judy Wong
August 1, 2015 at 4:27 pm

Hello Scott!
Loved hearing you today…(excuse the very long winded comment :))

I love your comment here…”the classroom becomes a kind of ‘self-healing’ organism,

with the teacher as last resort, you have a really potent content for ‘scaffolded’ risk-
taking”.

In every class I teach that is what I have always strive to achieve. I think it is impor-
tant that in doing so to 1) assess who your students are, 2) what are their aims, 3)
where are they coming from, and then 4) set up, from the start, an environment that
welcomes this kind of learning. It requires a very light handed approach and a great
deal of humor. When done right, the adult students are relaxed and open to learning,
correcting some fossilized issues, and tend to retain better. The children are engaged
and learning through play, as is natural developmentally.

I think it is very important to distinguish the differences in the approaches with chil-
dren vs adults. Having taught both, I can say there are great differences in them.
 Children come from a very different place, which is why I emphasize the importance
of knowing where your students come from…not just in location, as in country, but
in experience and previous knowledge as well.

Also, having taught many different aged students, from many different countries
around the world, very often at the same time, it is extremely important to be sensi-
tive to the where they come from in creating the right environment. In employing in-
structional conversation, which I do 90% of the time, I think one has to be sensitive
to when it is good and when perhaps a slightly different approach would be more ap-
propriate. Understanding all the different methods of error intervention is impor-
tant…and when to use which method, depending on the particular student. The key
is to teach the students you have not the ones you think you should have.

Oh, on an interesting note…someone in the discussion noted that NS are fun and NNS
are serious teachers. I don’t know about that. I recently polled a class and evidently
they all loved my class best because it was fun. Yet, they also confessed to another
teacher that I was very strict. So, I guess it can be fun within very strict boundaries. I
guess from my early developmental experience, I have found it is important to have
strict boundaries. This provides a safe space for learning, playing and making mis-
takes. The students always understand there is a safety net so it is okay to make those
mistakes. The interesting note was this was an adult class that thought I was very
strict yet a lot of fun.

Thanks Scott for, yet again, wonderful new nuggets of learning. No matter how old
the conversation there is always something new!

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