Make Excellent Mistakes...

For a long time I've admired my partner's commitment to sharing herself and her personal journey through blogging. This year, as I've moved into an administrative position at the school where I work, I decided that this would be a good forum through which to explore my thoughts on education and leadership - and I'm finally getting around to actually doing it!

My first post is what I wrote for the March issue of the US Voice and is the source of the name of my blog...

Enjoy!

As I think back over all of the workshops, sessions, and presentations I attended at the annual conference for the National Association of Independent Schools last week, the one piece that I’ve found myself going back to again and again is the phrase “Make Excellent Mistakes.” In his book, The Adventures of Johnny Bunko, Daniel Pink follows this statement with

Too many people spend their time avoiding mistakes. They’re so concerned about being wrong, about messing up, that they never try anything – which means they never do anything. Their focus is avoiding failure. But that’s actually a crummy way to achieve success.

As an educator, I see this tendency every day – the students who read a problem and ask for help before making a solid attempt, the students who are shy about offering their own ideas in class for fear that they might be wrong, and the teachers (including myself) who find reasons for not trying something new because it might not go as envisioned. In many ways, the system is stacked against our students. We want more from them, we want them to take risks, to try new things, to push their limits, but then we turn around and talk about the importance of good grades for college, about building a strong resume. The mixed message can be hard for teenagers to navigate.

In my classroom, I make efforts to create an atmosphere where students are free to try without worry about how their result, success or failure, will impact their grade. Students read and work on new material on their own and with each other, present problems on the board, and give each other feedback. The goal is help them be comfortable with uncertainty, to take the risk to go to the board even when they aren’t sure they completely understand the concepts. Any mistakes they make in this process are “excellent mistakes” – mistakes that come from having high aspirations for what they can accomplish.

As teachers and parents, it is important for us to remind kids that making mistakes is an integral part of life. What’s important is not avoiding the mistakes, but what they do after having made one – how do they respond.