With all of the papers, homework and tests that cross a teacher’s desk, you’d think that a healthy relationship to mistake-making would come easy, but it’s not that simple. Messing up does not come naturally for most people, especially teachers who are constantly under the scrutiny of students, guardians, colleagues and administrators. And because teachers are tasked with making an estimated 3,000 non-trivial decisions everyday, it makes sense that some of those decisions will end up being mistakes.
As teachers navigate the pandemic in real time, many are trying to figure out how to hold themselves accountable in their mistake making without beating themselves up. In her new book “Risk. Fail. Rise.: A Teacher’s Guide to Learning from Mistakes,” New York-based educator Colleen Cruz explores how it can be generative and fruitful for teachers and students alike when things do not go quite according to plan. While an educator’s margin for error is oftentimes very slim, determining how to classify and learn from mistakes can make space for more freedom and adaptability in one’s teaching practice.
Believe it or not: even though it usually doesn’t feel good to make a mistake, there is such a thing as a good mistake. Eduardo Briceño, co-founder of Mindset Works, provides four categories that are useful for classifying mistakes. He looks at an error’s potential for meaningful learning opportunities to distinguish between positive and negative mistakes.
Mistakes are not the only things that vary. The impact changes too. “It’s not just that our mistakes affect us differently because of where we stand in the world, but also that our mistakes affect students differently because of their identities,” Cruz explains in her book. There are some mistakes where the impact can be so harmful to kids that adults should establish “zero-fail missions” to make sure failure is unlikely to occur. Teaching students to read and having students see themselves in their curriculum are important research-backed zero-fail missions, Cruz says.
Cruz advises that teachers own up to the harmful impact of their actions regardless of whether their intentions were good. While admitting to errors is uncomfortable, it shows students how to take ownership over their actions and impact. It also communicates that students are valuable and worthy of the respect that a genuine apology requires.
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