Mistakes Are Good

With the new school year, I’ve been thinking about what I will do differently this year than in previous years. A lot of things come to mind. More pair work and group work. More differentiated instruction. Less grammar in my 4/5 class. More grammar in my 4/5 class. Less computer time for my Literacy students. More computer time for my Literacy students. I’m sure I’ll do all of these things, but is there one thing? None of those ideas felt like the one.

Then I found it watching a TED talk by Roberto Guzman, a professor at the University of Puerto Rico. He said: “If you want to learn a language, you have to be willing to make mistakes. Make lots of mistakes… This is part of the language acquisition process.”

Here’s my emphasis for this school year: I want to create a classroom where my students not only know it’s okay to make mistakes, but where they welcome them, as well.

The Stigma of Mistakes

Mistakes are good. As Prof. Guzman said, they are part of learning. We all know that. Yet, as I have found in my classes, there’s always a stigma around student errors. When I taught in Oman, it was a big problem to get students to go to the board. The main reason was the students didn’t want to look stupid if they made an error. This was an entrenched attitude in the students, and it was hard to overcome.

Here in Canada, our adult students can also be wary of giving the wrong answer. When I tell them that mistakes are good, they say:

“Yes, yes, we know. It’s how we learn.”

Or they want me to check their work before they write it on the board. When I say we’ll check it on the board, there’s hesitation, and a pleading look in their eyes. They end up putting their answers on the board, but a lot of the times there’s a bit of a tango between us to get them to do it.

When the answers are all on the board, and after I survey the work, I say in a cheerful tone:

“There are a lot of good mistakes. Wonderful.”

The students laugh.

“Good mistakes. Ha. Ha. Good one,” they say.

Three Strategies for Weakening Stigma

So, I want to work towards weakening the stigma around mistakes. How am I going to do that? Three ways.

First, as in the last example, I will use humour. I’ve found that making light of students’ wrong answers is a good way to lower their affective filters—their fear of looking bad in front of their peers. With my Literacy students, for example, when a student writes a word that tails upward, my students say, “Toronto,” meaning the airport, because the word looks like an airplane taking off.

Another strategy I will use is peer support. To be honest, though, the students help each other naturally. In my Literacy classes, the more advanced students like helping a struggling student with their work. The more advanced student also learns by having to explain as best they can in English or show the other student how to do the assignment.

Last, for writing tasks in my 4/5 class this year, I’m going to use the rubric more. Specifically, I’m going to sit down with a student and go over their writing task using the rubric, pointing out what they did wrong, and, more importantly, how to improve their work. I want to show the students how their mistakes point to learning.

Mistakes Are Mind Blowing

To conclude, neuroscience supports the importance of mistakes. As Jo Boaler points out in her book Limitless Mind, when a student struggles with the material, trying to understand where they went wrong and figuring out solutions, new neural pathways are formed in the brain. Mistakes are truly mind-expanding!

And isn’t that one of our aims—expand our students’ minds?

So, this year’s mantra is: Mistakes are our friends.