The Benefit of Mistakes

This may seem like an obvious statement, but students learn from mistakes. I think, however, that we tend to focus too often on avoiding mistakes in the name of reaching 100% accuracy the first time around. Mistakes are an integral part of the learning process. Don't get me wrong--I want our students to study diligently for their spelling tests and try their best to spell all the words correctly. However, mistakes can and will occur, and when they do, we all need to learn from them. Students can make the necessary modifications, and teachers can learn about a child's learning style and/or what material needs to be reinforced with an individual child or the whole class. (We tend to forget about how adults can learn from the students' errors. That is a mistake, no pun intended!). In the opening all-school assembly, I made a mistake on purpose in order to show the students that it was "OK" to err and fine (and often necessary) to be corrected in front of others. I welcomed the audience to the 2007-2008 school year, and Dr. Trusty, on cue, came to microphone and told me that I had the wrong year. The text of my speech is as follows: "Dr. Trusty, thank you for correcting my mistake. You are right. It is the 2011-12 school year, NOT the 2007-08 school year! The first thing I wanted to stress this morning is that it is OK to make mistakes, and it is important that your teachers correct you. That is all part of the learning process. Your teachers might correct you one on one, or they might correct you in front of the class, but that is fine, too. No one will be corrected in front of about 725 people like I just was. Again, I expect that all of us will make mistakes this year. We just need to learn from the mistakes and how to do things correctly, whether it is math, science, handwriting, music, or geography, to name a few subjects."