It’s a Mistake Not to Use Mistakes as Part of the Learning Process

I recently heard a TED talk from Brian Goldman, a doctor who admits to having made mistakes. In very emotional language, he describes some costly emergency room mistakes, and then makes a strong case for changing the way that the medical profession addresses such things. He believes that medicine will improve if doctors are free to discuss their mistakes, without judgment, allowing them to learn from each other. But, he continued, because doctors are judged by mistakes, they are too afraid to discuss them. Instead, they are often covered up, blamed on others, or ignored.

Hearing this talk created in me a great need to examine the many mistakes I have made in my life. I discovered that my mistakes fall into four categories:

It’s the last two categories that I think have great potential to increase learning and teaching.

Finding Value in Error

Teachers, like doctors, are expected to be mistake free. Administrators, parents, and even other teachers judge them very negatively for making mistakes. Yet when a teacher forms strong relationships with another teacher or two, they share their problems freely, ask for and give advice, and learn from each other. This also happens in schools where mentor teachers share ideas with new teachers.

What would happen if those pairs or threesomes expanded to include a small group of teachers, plus administrators, counselors, or even whole departments or entire school faculties? I know that some schools have created the trust necessary for such discussions. I think this concept could grow to include a wider number of schools, maybe even become a regular professional procedure for all teachers. What would you think of this idea? Is it feasible? Worthwhile? Helpful? An important side effect of discussing mistakes might be to change the perception of mistakes, not only for teachers, but for students as well. When teachers learn from their mistakes, they might be more willing to let students learn from theirs.

Changing perceptions about students' mistakes is the second way that mistakes can improve learning. In the vast majority of classrooms, mistakes are evaluated as poor performance. Grades are lowered by mistakes. Students are encouraged both formally and informally not to make mistakes.

This belief system is absurd. When I thought of the mistakes I made over the years, the bigger my mistake, the more I learned. I learned from my success, also, but not nearly as much. I guess that every reader of this post has learned and is still learning from mistakes.

9 Ways to Teach With Mistakes

The problem for students is not that they make mistakes. The real problem is that teachers don't use those mistakes to allow and promote learning. Because shame is currently attached to mistakes, students are afraid to take chances, explore, and think for themselves. As a clear example of how damaging this view can be, look at the makeup of most gifted and talented programs. In far too many schools, the students in these classes are not the most creative risk takers or unique thinkers. They are the students who scored the highest on standardized tests. Therefore, we label as gifted or talented the students who make the fewest mistakes. I believe that it's a mistake to think of mistakes as something bad. When mistakes become learning opportunities, everything changes. Students take more risks, think in new ways, cheat less, and solve mysteries that had previously eluded them.

Here are some things that we can do in the classroom to change this defeating way of thinking, including both formal and informal evaluation processes:

I would love to see a sign on every entrance to every school that says, "Everyone who enters here will learn." Learning means not being afraid to examine mistakes that teachers make and encouraging students to think in ways that might produce mistakes. Use all these mistakes to learn from, to improve, and to feel good about individual progress.