Earn Your Eraser

One of the most beautiful things I have learned in my first few months at Brearley is that our Kindergarten and Class I students need to earn their erasers. Erasers are restricted until a student understands that learning involves making plenty of mistakes. Embedded in the “earn your eraser” method is a lesson about learning itself, and how to understand the process and our own humanity in the endeavor. The approach is brilliant! It redirects our students’ focus away from “perfection” and towards a genuine appreciation for the learning journey.  

Our students' initial instincts are to erase every misstep; they have a strong desire to demonstrate mastery on their first attempt. In my career, I have observed that young people, particularly girls, often aspire to convey effortless achievement. But the fact of the matter is that all of us draw many crooked lines before we can draw a straight one, and writing a meaningful sentence requires multiple drafts. Expecting to master a skill immediately is unrealistic and may result in negative self-talk for a girl when she encounters her own crooked line: “I am not smart enough,” “good enough,” “fast enough,” etc. The Lower School path to earning an eraser helps to replace their feelings of frustration with the understanding that learning takes time, trial and error, and plenty of mistakes. 

In our Middle and Upper School, students work closely with their teachers on written assignments and demonstrate through floats, numerous drafts, and even in the revision history of a typed assignment, how their thinking and skills evolve in the learning process that leads to a polished paper. I am grateful that our school has multiple ways to honor the “truth and toil” that lasting growth and deep learning require. Paradoxically, it is the acceptance of imperfections, rather than the pursuit of perfection, that keeps a student engaged in learning for the long haul and leads her to more remarkable (and joyful!) outcomes.