Photo by David Pennington on Unsplash

Level one: Three pencils

On the first level on the path towards writing mastery, you wrote with a pencil. Not an automatic one, they were too intricate for kids. And, too sharp. Pressing the end against the paper, as kids do in their most focused mode, only resulted in torn pages.

So, only standard pencils. Ideally HB2, the teacher said, and three pencils per student. One for you, second one in case you loose, break, or forget to sharpen the first one, third one to lend. Before returning a pencil, we were instructed, it’s good manners to sharpen it first.

Once I lend a pencil to the naughty kid, fully knowing the chances of getting it back were <50%.

He returned it, only not sharpened. I updated my predictions about the lack of trust towards naughty kids.

🆙 The next levels are level two and three.