Early in my career, my Director/mentor mentioned to me during a conversation how she hated hearing people telling children “I don’t care”.  Like, “I don’t care if you were there first, we don’t hit”. She felt the child may only hear the “I don’t care” and not the rest.  Most of the time, the meaning would remain the same if the phrase were removed.

Her words had a profound impact on how I viewed what I said to children. I’m not sure how often I actually said, “I don’t care”, but I removed it from my vernacular. I’ve removed other phrases such as “I don’t want to hear..”  as I feel they may also convey an unintended meaning.

Children are literal. And, like most of us, dwell often on only a portion of what was said. Most of the time the focus is on the negative part of the message. The lesson I took away from the conversation with my director was that words matter. Even if the phrase is a well known saying, the children will pick out the literal words and not the more abstract meaning. After all, they only have a few years of experience and their brains just aren’t ready for the more abstract meanings in sayings and colloquialisms. 

Has a mentor or colleague shared something that made an impact with you that you could share with a newer teacher?