When my teacher told me that my mistakes show her that I’m trying and that my mistakes help her see where she needs to change in how she teaches to a way I understand, my life changed forever in a really good way – anonymous student
I was going through a series of posts and this caught my eye. As an educator, we tend to point out the mistakes of our students, and tell them where they went wrong and how they can improve their learning and get better grades, but have we ever stopped to see the reason behind the mistakes? maybe it is in the way we teach, This was something I had to reflect on as a teacher
Teachers like doctors are expected to be faultless, mistake-free. Administrators, parents, and even other teachers judge them very negatively for making mistakes. Yet when we tend to share our problems, freely ask for and give advice from our fellow educators we get to learn from each other. An important side effect of discussing mistakes leads to changing the perspective 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 our perspective matters a lot as a teacher. Students are constantly learning, but they are encouraged to be faultless, not make any mistakes. This belief system and the shame associated with mistakes must change. because when a child is put down for his /her mistakes it only hampers their curiosity, their courage to take chances to explore and think for themselves. So I started trying this new method, to show them where exactly they went wrong, how they can improve their work and that made a huge difference, students were more open to learning and understanding and their grades improved too
