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https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_we_should_embrace_mistakes_in_school>
"When my daughter was a toddler, I regularly spilled milk in front of her
during meal time. “Oops, oh well, no big deal, let’s clean it up!!” I would say
in my high-pitched, goofy mom voice.
Before she could speak, I sensed that she was wired for perfectionism
(something very familiar to me), so I attempted to normalize day-to-day
mistakes and to show her how easy it was to bounce back from them.
We’re in the thick of the spilled-milk journey right now—learning to accept and
embrace mistakes on a larger scale. Now that she is 13 years old, I am all the
more sensitized to how she responds to mistakes at school, in particular—and
how they enhance or detract from her learning.
For many teens, perceived faults loom large as their self-consciousness grows.
Theorist David Elkind’s classic description of an adolescent’s sense of an
“imaginary audience” may not be so imaginary these days. Kids are watching each
other closely both in school and online—judging, comparing, and
evaluating—while mental health conditions like anxiety and depression are on
the rise.
Our performance-based school culture may not be helping, but there is an
alternative—and it involves guiding our students to embrace the very failures
they’re trying to avoid."
Via Muse.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
