Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself (Richard Bach)

Photo by Paul Greenberg on Unsplash

Recently, I had to own a stuff-up due to my inexperience with certain protocols.

The roster had me on lunch duty. Part of that duty is to allow girls in year groups to enter the dining hall, check they've washed their hands and keep things moving. I checked in the hall a couple of times and thought it was okay to allow more girls in to get their lunch.

Wrong! 

There are two sittings for lunch and I'd failed to remember that the kitchen staff have to replenish the food for the second sitting.

I owned my gaffe and apologised to the chef. Mea culpa is a great expression. I told him I'd learn from my error. He was very good about it - realising I was new to the role. Next time I'll slow down and check with the kitchen staff rather than make any unilateral decisions.

Mistakes happen - it wasn't fatal. There was enough food for everyone luckily and I was cut some slack. Phew.

Being true to myself means learning from my errors/gaffes and being honest whenever they happen - I'm sure to make more. Everybody does.

Now that I've owned it, I can let it go.

We should regret our mistakes and learn from them, but never carry them forward into the future with us (Lucy Maud Montgomery)

Photo by Pawel Janiak on Unsplash

With increased birthdays, comes wisdom. The kind of wisdom that says - students need to make mistakes - just as did our own children, and just as we all did in our own youth.

Much of what we learn, we learn by ourselves. We learn so much about ourselves and we improve by making our own mistakes.

As a young teacher I made many mistakes (some even when my superiors were observing me teach) and now, as a teacher with over 40 years experience, I still make many mistakes. Long may that happen.

Because, it is an absolute necessity.  As a teacher, I have to have that space to experiment, fail, and learn.

One by one I counted all those happiest of days; Yeah, That was my mistake (Split Enz)

Recently, I was doing a lesson observation of a teacher when she asked a student to do some work on the board. The student was fine to do that but said to the class, "Don't mock me if I get it wrong".

I thought that was brilliant. To their credit the students' classmates didn't mock her or even look like they were going to before of after her statement. But the worry was clearly there.

Students generally won't ask for help because, just like adults, we all care deeply about what others think of them.  

I hate asking for directions and I grew up with my father often asking me, "What are you trying to do?". So I get it. No one likes to look and feel incompetent.

The solution?

Awareness and care/compassion is a good start.

Teachers like the one I observed help address this by reassuring students and enabling a safe learning environment for making mistakes. One on one conversations in class and in Zoom's break-out rooms can also begin to turn this around.