What is the place of perfection and imperfection in our lives? When do things need to be just so, and when is close not good enough? When is imperfection or incompleteness actually the preferred state?
Among the regulations for the kohanim in Emor are a number which describe elements that must be perfect. For whose funeral they can become tameh, how they should keep their hair, and even whether they have some physical imperfection – all of these can affect whether they are able to serve their function of offering korbanot. The kohanim are klei kodesh and in this role, there is no space for imperfection.
When I think of our work as Maimonides educators, there are many places where perfection is the only acceptable option. As teachers, we must always find ways to love and appreciate our students, even when it may be challenging. We can never give up on them. We may not always succeed with every child, but that cannot be for lack of trying. Our teachers are, in this sense, klei kodesh.
We are also in the midst of counting the Omer. Until the last day, the mitzvah is not complete. For seven weeks we are in a state of moving toward completion, but we are not there yet. Our work at Maimonides is similar, as we live with imperfection and incompleteness, and the expectation of future completion. Our students will become independent of us, able to learn on their own. Every teacher knows that our ultimate job is to make ourselves unnecessary to our students. As with the completion of our counting, we know that it will come. And while our students may become independent learners at different rates, it does happen for all of them.
But while there are times in education when perfection is needed, or when we live with imperfection while knowing that we will reach completion, most of our time and effort in helping children learn is spent not only living with, but also celebrating imperfection and incompleteness. Or at least it should be.
This week I watched a video of my one-year-old grandson in the early stages of walking. He stood up, took several steps forward, and then keeled over, laughed, and moved on to try again. Every time he tried to walk during the last few weeks, should I have said he failed or succeeded? Maybe both, but I am inclined to think of it all as success. He is learning something from each attempt, developing balance and strength from practice, as he gets himself part of the way upright and partly on his knees. This is precisely the state of all learning. We learn as much or more from the attempts that didn’t fully work as from the parts that did work. And while it is easy for us to see that a child learning to walk needs to get things partly wrong in order to learn, it is easy to forget that same lesson when it comes to learning in school.
While observing classes at Maimonides, my favorite moments are not when a child answers a question correctly, as very little learning happens at that moment. The special moments are watching our students say something that isn’t quite right (or is just plain wrong) and then work out how to make it better. That is the heart of learning for every student, no matter their age or skill. They learn by doing, recalibrating, and then trying again.
Students and teachers who can live with imperfection together create the most productive learning environment. While we have two weeks and a bit left of Sefirah, let’s relish living in the imperfection and promise that incompleteness offers. | 