Teacher's mistake: not including all the children in the school performance

This is a story from my aunt Catherine McShane. This was one of my first interviews for The Mistake Bank in 2007, but I never posted the video due to its poor quality (camera and cinematographer not so great). I have always liked this story and it fits perfectly in our Education section.

In the 1950s I was teaching for the first time. I taught in California, and then we didn't have a kindergarten in most places. The children I got had not been to kindergarten. And so it was new for them as it was for me. As we went along, we kind of grew together.

I had 60 children in first grade. One of the activities we did with the children was an end of year program for the parents. This one year the children were doing a dance. They were all involved - all 60. But somewhere along the way - because some of them were so immature - I decided not to include all of them in the final performance.

We had the dance; parents enjoyed it. However, when the dance was over, I had one parent come up to me. He said, "You did not allow my son to dance. I came all the way from Chicago to take his picture."

Now I see the difference in not allowing all the children to participate, whether they could dance or not. It was a poor decision. And I certainly learned a lot from that. I have now retired, but I still remember this clearly. It's very important to get the approval of parents and teachers and classmates, and agree that everybody gets involved.