The mistake I made (and told my students about)
I made a mistake in class the other day. A grammar question came up, one of those slippery ones that looks simple until it isn’t, and I gave the wrong answer. Confidently.
Later, when I was alone, I looked it up. I read, cross-checked, double-checked. And yes, I was wrong.
So the next day, I walked into the room and told them.
“My explanation yesterday wasn’t right,” I said. “Here’s what I’ve found since.”
My students, young, wide-eyed, kind, stared at me, genuinely surprised.
“You can be wrong?” one of them asked, half-joking, half-serious. “Yes,” I said, smiling. “A lot, actually.”
🌼
I’m not a native English speaker. I learned the language through years of reading borrowed books, watching subtitles, listening closely, speaking softly. I never had a rulebook in hand, I had instinct, rhythm, and then later, correction.
Even now, I’m still learning the rules that others grew up with. I’ve taught myself enough to teach others. But I’ve never stopped being a student.
I think it’s important that they see this. That their teacher, a figure usually expected to be right, can also be wrong, and own it. That it doesn’t diminish her. That it doesn’t end the learning but instead opens it.
Some lessons are taught by accident. This one was about honesty. About revising. About not needing to perform perfection in order to be a good guide.
If anything, it made the room warmer.
Persimmons Rain, I think, is full of these small, unexpected turns. A lesson where the teacher learns. A correction that becomes connection. A grammar error that becomes a story.
And maybe that’s the kind of classroom I hope to build: not flawless, but responsive. Not rigid, but alive.