unique

I remember in 2nd grade, whenever it was someone’s birthday, we would all take a half sheet of construction paper and write one sentence on what we liked about the person. The model sentence went like this:

I like <insert birthday person’s name> because <he/she> is _______________.

Then we decorated the paper with drawings, usually somewhat related to our concocted sentence.

Each student’s paper would be collected and bound together with a plastic spiral binding and the cover laminated so that by the end of the year, everyone had a book full of reasons why they were liked.

Pretty great idea, right?

The only downside is that inevitably, some students said that they couldn’t think of anything they liked about some of the students. So Mrs. Chafin, my second-grade teacher explained that we could write “because he/she is UNIQUE” which meant that they were different. Which no one could really protest against.

So you could basically leaf through your booklet and find out which kids didn’t like you or didn’t have anything nice to say about you. Kind of a downer.

To this day, whenever I hear someone say, “That’s really unique” or “She’s really unique” I can’t help but think it’s just code for “I have nothing nice to say about that” or “I don’t like her.” Even if that’s not what they mean.

It’s terrible. Elementary school teachers, be careful what you teach!

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Comments

haha, how funny! we did that this year..where the kiddos got to write a page for a friend..and that’s the exact sentence stem that we used. we brainstormed words we could use for their friends..i guess in 1st grade..they are still friends with everyone so if they can’t think of ANYTHING..they would say things like..’because your hair is pretty’..or ‘you always get A+’..or my personal fav. ‘you always listen to the teacher’ ha, wish i could say all the kiddos listened to the teacher funny post. don’t worry, we don’t really use the word ‘unique’ in 1st grade. they’re just ’special’ haha..j’k