The Importance of Following Directions

August 20, 2014
Day 112

I was in 4th Grade when I learned this lesson, and it was a class I'll never forget.  Mrs. Marks handed out the assignment, and told us to begin whenever we were ready.  We all got to work right away. 

The assignment was unique, something I'd never seen before, but I liked it a lot.  Write your name in a certain part of the page.  Draw a box around it.  Circle "1."  Underline this, cross out that, keep going and doing everything as the assignment explained.  (The one pictured here isn't the version she gave us).

We were all working quickly, but one of my classmates, my friend Lex, was always extra fast.  He apparently sped through the thing like it was on fire...but that isn't how we knew he was done first. 

From the front of the classroom, Mrs. Marks was in hysterics looking at Lex, as he was now quickly erasing most of his work.  What the heck?  We didn't understand, and though we laughed along with the teacher (and Lex too, as he kept erasing), we didn't know what was so funny.  Well as I recall, Mrs. Marks told us all to stop, and then read the first and last instructions to understand.

On our sheet, the first instruction said, "Read everything before doing anything."  This first instruction was one that every single one of us failed to do, because if we had read the instructions clearly before beginning, we would have realized the last instruction on the page advised us to only do a small part of the whole assignment.  "Now go back and only do number 1," was what my assignment ended with.  Of the 25 or so of us in that room, not one of us had read everything before beginning.  Mrs. Marks (and I imagine, teachers everywhere) are counting on this when they hand out this kind of assignment.  Sometimes students should fail in order to learn.

It was a lesson I'll never forget, because I never laughed so hard in a classroom as I did that day, and probably very rarely so much since.  Seeing my teacher laughing at the furious speed of Lex and his eraser was just such a fun experience, especially once we realized what the reason was.

So what did I learn from this?  Well as it turns out, lots of things. 

I learned creative teaching techniques are often more effective than the norm.  I learned a teacher with a sense of humor will do much better in the classroom than one without.  I learned that sometimes failure is an option, and once we experience it, in whatever form it takes, we can learn from our mistakes.  And most importantly, I learned the importance of following directions.  From the day I received this test in 4th grade onward, I have always read the directions of any form very, very carefully.  And when all else fails, it's also always a good idea to keep an eraser close at hand!