Who Says
Hello,
When my oldest son, Nolan, started preparing for his engineering internship this summer, his employer sent him software to learn before his first day. Between college classes, track, and everything else that came with wrapping up his junior year, he hadn't spent much time looking at it. As we talked about it one evening, he admitted he hoped his first day would mostly consist of paperwork and enough time to get up to speed.
Trying to reassure him, I said, "Don't feel like an imposter. They interviewed you. They know what you know and what you don't know yet."
He looked at me for a second before replying. "Oh, I don't feel like an imposter. I know I can learn it. I just haven't learned it yet."
There was no bravado in his voice. He wasn't pretending to know something he didn't. He simply didn't confuse not knowing with not being able to know.
As soon as he said it, I recognized the thought. I'd had it before. When I was in elementary school, we took standardized tests every year. I remember sitting at my desk thinking something that, looking back, was probably a little unusual for a child: This isn't a test of me. It's a test of my teacher.
I wasn't blaming my teacher if I got an answer wrong. I simply believed that if I had been taught something, I could learn it. If I didn't know an answer, it meant I hadn't learned that particular thing yet. At no point did I believe the test was measuring my intelligence or my potential. It was measuring what I knew at that moment.
As an educator, I still believe that. In fact, I know just how cumulative good teaching can be, especially in the earliest grades. A child's opportunities to learn build year after year. That's one of the reasons assessments can be valuable. They provide information. They help us understand what students know and what they still need to learn.
Somewhere along the way, though, many assessments became something else. When Nolan was in third grade, I attended his open house where his teacher had hung posters around the room for parents to respond to. One asked what adults read. Another invited parents to complete the sentence, "When I think about the state assessments, I feel..." The responses on the second poster were almost entirely negative.
Nervous.
Stressed.
They aren't necessary.
I don't like them.
I wasn't surprised. This was the height of the testing debates. Parents had strong opinions, and many had good reasons for them. What struck me wasn't the comments themselves. It was the realization that many children never have the opportunity to experience those tests on their own terms.
A third grader doesn't know what a state assessment is. They don't know whether it's difficult or easy, fair or unfair. They don't know whether it's something to fear because they haven't experienced it yet. Which means if they walk into school already anxious, that fear didn't begin with them. Long before they sharpen a pencil or click their first answer, many have already inherited someone else's story.
Educators spend a great deal of time thinking about what children know, and we should. While we're teaching them to read, solve equations, and understand history, they're deciding what kind of learner they are. They're deciding whether mistakes mean they aren't capable or whether they simply haven't learned something yet. They begin constructing a story about themselves, one that often lasts much longer than any fact they memorize or any score they earn. How many of the stories we carry through life began by someone else handing us their story that we internalize as our own?
Not all stories are told to us by others. Some are one we write ourselves. Academically, I've almost always believed that if someone taught me something well enough, I could learn it. That belief has served me throughout school and my career. Dancing, though, is a different story.
I took ballet lessons when I was little and loved every minute of it. Around ten years old, I became painfully self-conscious. I was the new kid, and suddenly wearing a leotard in front of other people felt unbearable. I quit. From that point on, I'd watch dancers on television or kids at school dances and think, I can't dance.
Looking back, I don't think anything actually changed except the story I told myself. It went from, I love to dance to I won't dance to I can't dance. Over time, the notion of I can't dance stopped feeling like a story and started feeling like a fact.
Maybe that's why Nolan's response caught my attention. He reminded me of my thinking about taking tests. He knew he didn't know the software. He also knew that wasn't the same thing as not being able to learn it. More importantly, I thought I was encouraging him by reminding him that he wasn't expected to know everything on his first day. Instead, he reminded me of something I had believed almost my entire life.
As a little girl, I believed standardized tests measured what I'd learned, not who I was. Somehow I carried that belief into adulthood. Yet somewhere else, after one awkward season of my life, I quietly decided I wasn't someone who danced. I accepted that conclusion so completely that I stopped questioning whether it was ever true.
The older I get, the more I wonder how many of the stories we live by begin that way. Some are handed to us by parents, teachers, friends, or the world around us. Others are written in a moment of embarrassment, comparison, or disappointment. Given enough time, we stop remembering they were stories at all.
As adults, we have the privilege of helping children write the stories they'll carry about themselves. Whether we intend to or not, we're always teaching them what to believe is possible. At the same time, we have one more responsibility. We need to keep revisiting the stories we've been telling ourselves. Some of them still deserve to be believed. Others deserve to be rewritten.
~Heather
P.S. The stories children tell themselves don't appear out of nowhere. They are often shaped by the adults around them.
That is why my Catch of the Week this week is Adam Grant's conversation with Oprah.
In one part of the interview, Grant shares research showing that something as simple as the experience level of a child's kindergarten teacher can predict future success and even earnings decades later. At first, that sounds almost impossible to believe. Then he explains why. Early teachers don't just teach letters and numbers. They help children develop confidence, curiosity, resilience, and beliefs about what they are capable of becoming.
That idea resonated with me because it extends far beyond kindergarten. Every parent, teacher, coach, mentor, and employer is helping someone write a story about themselves. Sometimes we reinforce the belief that "I can't." Other times, we help someone discover they simply haven't learned something yet.
The catch is this: facts matter, but the stories people believe about themselves often matter even more. The words we choose today may become the voice someone carries for the rest of their life.
P.P.S. Please remember to...
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