Mistakes necessary, natural components of learning
By Xavier Botana, with Melea Nalli
Remember learning to ride a bicycle? An adult probably ran
alongside you, holding onto the bike to keep you moving. When they let go, you
may at first have wobbled or fallen. But you learned from your early mishaps —
and now you can ride a bike.
In an important way, learning in the classroom is like
learning to ride a bicycle: Mistakes can serve as a proving ground for
improvement.
The Portland Public Schools believe that practicing and
learning from mistakes are natural and necessary parts of the learning process.
In fact, that belief is the sixth of our district’s seven
Core Beliefs about Learning.
Together with Melea Nalli, our Assistant Superintendent of
Teaching and Learning, I’m writing a series of columns about our Learning
Beliefs. This month we’re focusing on how our teaching practices help students
learn from their mistakes.
At the Portland Public Schools, we don’t want our students’ early
mistakes in learning to stop them from realizing their potential. That’s why we
use a cycle of instruction that includes different ways to show what they know
and frequent feedback and revision.
At Deering High School, for instance, students are encouraged
to explore their strengths and weaknesses while taking rigorous courses. To
support that, says Deering AP biology teacher Ian McLean, “in several AP
classes we allow students a chance to make up half the difference between their
original score and a 100. For example, for a multiple choice question typically
seen on an AP exam, a student must articulate in essay format both why their
answer was conceptually wrong and how the right answer is the best choice. …
This promotes the idea that learning is a work in progress and mistakes are
inevitable if you are truly challenging yourself.”
In math classes, students often feel a sense of failure when
they make mistakes, despite the fact that brain research shows that deeper
learning results from making mistakes on difficult tasks, notes Riverton
Elementary School Principal Ann Hanna.
So, in classes such as math, she says, “we encourage
students to look at their mistakes as opportunities for growth. When a student
makes a mistake, but is demonstrating a misconception that is probably common
across the room, a teacher might comment: ‘Oh, that’s my favorite mistake! Can anyone figure out how he or she might
have gotten that answer?’ The idea is
that there is a lot of learning that comes from looking at our mistakes.”
In an elementary reading or writing workshop, students and
teachers have a “growth mindset” — an understanding “that mistakes are where
the learning begins,” says Lorraine
Bobinsky, a teacher leader at Reiche Community School.
The workshop teacher provides in-the-moment feedback, naming
what each student is doing well and then teaching into next steps. “The teacher
is always analyzing where the students are by looking at the students'
misunderstandings or mistakes and then providing explicit feedback to support
the students as they get closer and closer to the learning target,” Bobinsky
said.
At East End Community School, staff use restorative
approaches to help students learn from “mistakes” in social emotional situations.
Instead of focusing on what students in conflict have done “wrong,” students are
given the opportunity to hear each other’s perspectives and the impact their
actions had. They then work together to repair harm and reach agreement on how
to move forward, learning long-term problem-solving strategies and empathy in
the process.
In all these examples, constructive feedback, revision and different
ways to demonstrate proficiency help turn mistakes into learning opportunities.
