Flawsome*

Adj: Someone born to be awesome not perfect

“Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.” - From Anthem by Leonard Cohen

Nine years ago everything I thought I knew about education was turned on its head by a class of third and fourth-grade kids in Bollingbrook, Illinois. I was there to do a reading from my book, Lead With Your Heart, which tells the story of how a big, black, slobbery pit bull named Lance overcomes fear and prejudice to find his forever home.

At the end of the reading I invited the kids to draw the main character in the book, Lance. At first, they loved the idea and raced to get drawing supplies from their cubbies. But only minutes after starting I started hearing complaints.
“Mine is ugly.”
“I can’t draw.”
”This is stupid.”
And most important of all, “Mine’s not perfect like yours.”
Say what?

When I asked the kids to tell me what they thought not perfect meant, they said, “stupid, ugly, dumb, messed up, dirty, bad, weird, insane, crummy, gross, broken, unhappy, disgusting, rubbish, stinky, losers." When they were done, I had a list of more than 30 negative adjectives and the teachers and I were in tears. I left Bollingbrook determined to understand why eight and nine-year-olds believe they have to be perfect.

The results of my research took me into hundreds of classrooms where I talked to teachers, parents, school administrators and of course kids. From those conversations I learned the reasons kids feel they have to be perfect and decided to do something about the problem. The result is The Not Perfect Hat Club - the story of a purebred golden retriever named Newton. Newton is a dismal failure in the show ring. His tail is too long, his legs are too short, and he can’t remember how to sit or stay. Eventually, he’s adopted by a counselor who teaches him to be a therapy dog. His job is to help kids understand that they’re meant to be awesome, not perfect.

The Not Perfect Hat Club (NPHC) and the accompanying programs I developed to go with the book have been used in classrooms around the world. A core group of educators and I even ran an eight-week global program with 600 schools in 16 countries taking part. The NPHC initiative has changed how I see both myself and how we educate our kids. I’m convinced that helping kids develop the emotional intelligence and core literacy skills they need to become kind, caring, and competent adults is the key to many of the issues facing the world today.

All of this was a long way to share one of my ongoing passions and to invite you to join me. If you’d like to know more about The Not Perfect Hat Club initiative please visit https://www.dreamingwideawake.org/critterkin.

Jena

P.S. *Flawsome is a word I made up. Let’s use it often to describe all the talented and imperfect people doing amazing things in the world.

If you are an educator or parent who’d be interested in bringing The Not Perfect Hat Club to your school, please drop me a line at JenaBall@CritterKin.com

Copyright 2025 by Jena Ball. All Rights Reserved.

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