Learning through mistakes

Can we learn without making mistakes?

James Nottingham's Learning Pit, advocates that without failure you can't learn.

During my own education, failure was not something celebrated.  I remember with clarity being stood up in front of a class of peers and asked to spell my last name, in which everyone else could do but I couldn't.  I remember the feeling of failure.  I also remember subconsciously defining learning as copying, trying to be the same,  so that I remained in the safe zone.

I think maybe that is why as an adult, I try really hard not to fail.  However, over the last two years I have been inspired by my students that failure in learning is necessary and failure by its very nature can, if it is treated wisely give ownership to learning in a powerful way.

In a classroom the learning environment should be one where failure is acknowledged.  In fact, failure should be celebrated.  I watched as my students (5 to 8 year olds) learnt to not only recognise their failures but to celebrate them and ultimately, do something about them by using them to learn.  I think that the ability to be a truely self managing learner is not possible without acknowledging failure in a positive way.  Traditionally education not only controled what students learnt, but it  controled their failures and in doing took away powerful learning opportunities.

As a part of a learning community, as the teacher, my job is to create an atmosphere where failure is allowed and the process through it supported.  That means things can get messy.  I am not just talking about academic mistakes, but emotional and social ones.

During this term, I have experienced one of each type of mistakes and thought I would share.

1.  Academic - I finished my Masters (yeah!) but I got the feedback (not so great) and it reinforced what a terrible speller and grammener (okay that is not a word, but you know what I mean, fullstops, apostrophes and the like).  When I read the feedback, of "you have done enough to pass", I felt failure. This learning became a sinking feeling.  The thing is though, this failure framed in a traditional learning context would leave me powerless, unable to succeed.  Actually, this is not true, I can do something about this.  I can go  and learn how to improve.  The internet provides many opportunities to learn how to write.   In failure, we have to get over ourselves quickly and make adjustments.   One of the adjustments, is to remember to focus on what I did learn, in this case, I learnt some key things which are not dependent on spelling and grammar but are significant to my ongoing work as an educator.

2.  Social - It was my job to get the keynote speaker to the conference in time for 9am. Here I was with one of my educational hero's!  I was in a strange city and without Mrs google.  Anyway, I took a wrong turn and went to re-adjust only to discover it was in a one way street and I was now driving in the wrong direction.  At that very moment a traffic officer drove past. Yep, I got a ticket.  Good news though, he showed me the right way to go and we made it on time.  Her keynote speech was awesome!  Now this could have been a high risk mistake on many levels, lucky for me the nice officer came along at the right time to re-direct.  This reminds me that there are many different types of mistakes.  This blog post discusses them.

3. Emotional - I am now co-leading a team of teachers.   Working in teams is the default setting for many Early Childhood Educators.  However, for Primary and Secondary trained teachers this is different.  It really brings to mind the heart and head stuff.  How important it is to consider the heart of relating through how we relate.  At my new school, Haeata Community Campus, relationships are at the centre of everything we do.  However, building and maintaining relationships is complex.  So I made a mistake in the way I interacted with my team and really upset some them.  On reflection, I could completely see how I had done this.  I was able to explain why, said and meant sorry and they graciously forgave me and we moved on.   These type of mistakes ultimately involve emotions and are probably the hardest to deal with.  There is no getting away from it, where there are people trying to work together, there will be challenge.  How we deal with these mistakes impacts on how our students learn.  One of the positives in team teaching is that students will have us as models.  As we relate together on a daily basis little eyes are looking at us and ears are listening.  We have an amazing opportunity to showcase how we get over mistakes together in positive ways.

I believe strongly, that making mistakes, needs to be an everyday disposition that is seen and celebrated in our learning communities.  It is not likely that we are going to make mistakes on purpose, but learning how to recover from mistakes in a positive manner, is a crucial skill needed in the learning process.  I wonder how you will achieve this in your particular situation?   I wonder if you can help students learn to see failure as a positive in the learning process not only in the academic field but the social and emotional?  Finally I wonder how authentic these learning situations can be?

"After all these years, I am still involved in the process of self-discovery. It is better to explore life and make mistakes than to play it safe. Mistakes are part of the dues one pays for a full life" Sophia Loren.