Change How Mistakes Are Looked At

This one will be hard. Jumping off a building without a parachute or at least a bungee cord to learn about gravity is risky. It’s also either crazy, or really stupid, or both, because the risk involved is not reasonable. And while this example seems drastic, it might not be far off from the way many students perceive taking risks - asking questions, volunteering answers, and being wrong - in school.

So how do we change this classroom risk aversion?

Expect and Respect Mistakes

We can create a culture of mistake making in our classrooms by communicating to our students at the beginning of the school year that we expect and want them to make mistakes, because learning is more memorable when we inspect and correct our mistakes.

As teachers, we need to communicate this message frequently, because behavior modification takes time and effort.

In addition, we can be honest about our own mistakes, point them out when we make them, analyze them, and correct them as they happen. I found that students respect me more and I build more authentic relationships when I admit my mess-ups.

Inspect and Correct Mistakes

How does making, inspecting, and correcting our mistakes help us learn better?

We tend to feel embarrassed when we get something wrong in front of our peers, which makes these experiences more memorable than instances in which we guess correctly. And the benefits of such blush moments, evidenced by the sudden rush of blood to our heads and visible on our faces, cannot be understated. Emotions do wanders for the memory-making process of information encoding.

Additionally, we tend to put time into careful processing of mistakes we make as we do not want to be wrong again, especially about the same thing. We want to show we’re smart by improving ourselves and learning from our mistakes. Such processing and reprocessing leads to deeper knowledge. Deeper knowledge is the definition of true learning.

The key for students is to keep trying, knowing they will be wrong at times.

The key for teachers is to make mistakes part of the learning menu (FREE to you). And tips are required.

If you enjoyed this post or found it helpful consider signing up for my newsletter.

Hi! I'm Oskar.

I teach, write, and create to make teaching easier and learning simpler.

BOOKS