"I never make the same mistake twice.
I make it five or six times, just to be sure!"
Why are our biggest mistakes so memorable? It is so easy to cringe at the time that we reversed our car into a concrete pillar in front of year 10. Or when we sent our children to school in full uniform to find out later over dinner that it was a non-uniform day and we basically ruined their lives! When we realise that we have been chatting to colleagues with spinach on our teeth. When we simply get it wrong in front of others and die a little death inside.
Why are our minds always so focussed on what we do wrong and why do our errors have such an impact on our sense of self-worth? Is it possible that we remember these errors so clearly because our brain is programmed to remind us never to do this again? In the ancient past, mistakes could have led to our death. If we did get it wrong and survived to tell the tale, then our brain would have considered it essential to remind us never to make the same mistake twice. If this is the case and to err is indeed fundamentally human, we are not likely to be able to prevent this inbuilt sense of shame from temporarily consuming us.
Many of our learners fear failure. They are afraid to put their hands up when they aren't sure of the answer which has led to the invention of random name generators and lolly sticks. Often pupils prefer to seek reassurance from us or their friends before having the confidence to volunteer an answer to a more challenging problem. We might excuse pupils for being 'quiet' but if we rebrand them as those who fear failure most, do we have a responsibility to help them to overcome their fear of mistakes and wrong turns?
Our current school system is perhaps at fault too. Our shared success is measured by results; the end product and not the learning process. We encourage pupils to achieve high marks, we set data driven targets for pupils and we track their progress. We send reports home with grades and predictions and parents support and reward high academic achievement. Our assemblies and pastoral work promote excellence and despite our 'better luck next time' optimism, our pupils are inevitably disappointed if they didn't make the grade.
A total shift in ideology feels almost impossible, but after reading John Tomsett's blog '..not publishing data targets to students and parents' I understand that some schools are beginning to turn away from data driven target updates and goal setting. Some might argue that by not sharing predicted grades and test results, we are simply protecting pupils from failure for longer and by the time they receive their results they might have left school anyway, but to me this feels like a move towards improving intrinsic motivation.
Is it helpful to teach students to value mistakes and failures and to accept them as inevitable? By raising the profile of mistakes in our classroom we make more of an effort to correct them and to avoid them in future. Could we actually use our heightened awareness of failure to our advantage?
As part of my growth mindset theory inspired teaching experiments I have been trying to do this with my learners. Pupils have been taught to understand that the brain is malleable and that mistakes can help the brain to make new connections. At first, I understood this to mean that pupils should almost be encouraged to make lots of errors and that they should also be constantly reminded not to care. I was wrong about this. Mistakes in class should be seen as learning opportunities, carefully categorised and analysed to avoid future repetition. Here are some ideas that I am currently trialling in my MFL lessons.
1. THE PRE-MORTEM
In Black box thinking, Matthew Syed writes about the importance of predicting mistakes before they happen.
'a pre-mortem typically starts with the leader asking everyone in the team to imagine that the project has gone horribly wrong and to write down the reasons why on a piece of paper.'
In my lessons, I now try to encourage the learners to discuss the misconceptions and errors that they are likely to make.
I write their predictions down and leave them on display in the classroom for the rest of the lesson.
More often than not, the mistakes never happen!
2. CATEGORISING MISTAKES
Some mistakes are silly and inexcusable and often come as a result of poor effort. I am actually quite glad if pupils feel ashamed about making those! Another category of mistakes is common errors. They are a warning flag to me as their learning coach. I search for these and aim to find and discuss these during the lesson. if common errors analysis is left until the end of the lesson, it is often too late. To raise the profile of common errors I have a F.A.I.L board in my classroom. We find and analyse the error as a class and pupils are asked to correct the error. It remains on display for the duration of the lesson
Pupils in my lessons are expected to correct, redraft and to catalogue their mistakes. If common mistakes are still happening after further explanation or demonstration, then we will stop our lesson and practice deliberately (often using mini whiteboards) until mastery is achieved. I will also create homework and D.I.R.T time activities based on common errors for further practice.
I might be wrong, but I think that if mistakes both real and imagined are accepted, discussed and play a starring role in the learning process, then our pupils might feel more confident about taking risks and failing in front of their friends.
Life is a process of blind alleys, blunders, false starts and wrong turns with occasional successes thrown in to keep us going. If it isn't going well, then stop and make a change. Let's avoid generating 'eye on the prize' victims of A* excellence and allow them to enjoy the bumps in the road too!
Thanks for reading @BexK06
