In 2017 my first book on educational methods, titled It’s Like Riding a Bike-How to make learning last a lifetime, was published. With more than 10,000 copies printed, I decided that now is the time to share my thoughts with the world for FREE.
Over ten weeks in the summer/fall of 2023 a chapter of the book will be shared each week via this blog. Feel free to read in any order that works for you. Feel free to bookmark entries to read all at once at a later date. Feel free to share with others. Feel free to disagree with anything you read or to scream your affirmations from the mountain tops. This is for YOU. This is for our kids. This is how we teach so that it lasts a lifetime.
Chapter 4
Every early bike rider, and most experienced riders, fall down. We wear helmets to keep us safe. We have people hold our seats to keep us balanced. We get a push to help us move, yet at some point we will fall down. It is a guarantee. We fall down when learning to ride. We fall down when we do stunts and tricks. We fall down when we are making millions of dollars and creating YouTube videos or competing in the X Games, but those who get better, don’t stay down long. They get back up.
As kids experiment with new things, they will have hardships. They will fall. They will get hurt. They will make mistakes. As much as we try to prevent it, it will happen. Granted we do not push them down. We don’t help them fall, but it is our responsibility to help them get up. We reach out a loving hand, dry their tears, and celebrate how far they have come. We inspire, we motivate, we push, we teach. We don’t label; we don’t limit. When one of my children falls down, I do not stand over them and tell them they have failed. I do not label them as “not a bike rider” or someone who should just stick to walking. I help them up. I nurture the bruised knees and bruised egos and encourage them to try again.
Learning is all about do-overs. Doing anything right the first time is not a sign of learn-ing but a sign of learn-ed. We need to allow for mistakes. We must allow for slips and falls and not allow them to be a judgment or inhibitor of future success. When my daughter falls off her bike on the first day she is trying or the tenth day she is trying, it has no bearing on her whether or not she is a bike rider three weeks later. I don’t tell her she is only partly a bike rider because she fell off earlier. The fact that she can ride today is all that matters. Falling happens, but soon after, so does success.
Our classrooms are places of learning. As such, our students are going through an often-messy process toward acquiring skills. They will fall down as they go. The question is, what do we do about it? Do label students as failures? Do we give condemning progress updates? Or do we uplift, inspire, and encourage perseverance?
How does your feedback look in your class? In most classrooms, the primary mechanism by which we communicate progress to students is through grading. The Standards-Based Grading movement is one that has caught a lot of traction in recent years. It centers on the idea of identifying concrete and specific standards of learning and ensuring that student grades reflect the evidence that has been observed in relation to student mastery of that standard. Most of the teachers I have worked with across the country are able to understand the need for concrete, descriptive feedback, but how does that feedback manifest itself for a child in the learning process. Learning is very rarely binary. Being a bike rider is not a “yes you are” or “no you’re not”, endeavor. How would one differentiate feedback based on whether a child can ride with one hand on the handlebars or two? Is a child with training wheels on more proficient than a child with a parent holding onto the seat? Is a child riding a unicycle more advanced than an adult riding a motorcycle? In our classrooms, we often have a wide range of skills and abilities. We know each of our students is at a different place in their learning progression. We know that every child, every human, will make mistakes as they are learning. Do we allow for that or do we expect every child to show the same skills, the same way, at the same time, without mistakes, and without error? If we are in the learning business, it is time we begin to get into the “embrace mistakes” business.
Let’s start this discussion with a few practical, yet powerful, strategies. In your classroom, when a student makes a mistake or multiple mistakes, does he get the opportunity to redo whatever task, assignment, or activity was expected…for full credit? Do you collect every assignment students submit, those with multiple mistakes as well as those with few or no mistakes, provide grades, and then calculate an average score based on the mean? If so, why? As a parent when I see a grade on my child’s report card saying “B” do I know if my child struggled early or late? Do I know what they struggled with and what they excelled in? Do I know if they understood everything but struggled with responsibly turning things in on time or at all? We use grades to communicate with our parents and our students, but as I am told often, if people do not understand what I am saying, I am not communicating very well. It is on me to figure out a better way to get my point across. The same is true in your classroom. If we are to encourage risk-taking, we cannot penalize failure. We cannot include initial struggles in a final grade if progress was made. Using the running metaphor from earlier, if I trip on a curb running tomorrow morning and spend ten minutes nursing my injury, but in three weeks run a race and come in third place, my medal will not be stripped from me because of my mistake in practice. In your classroom is the same thing true?
It is important that students begin to recognize that mistakes are not an opportunity for condemnation. Mistakes will not have a negative impact but will allow for greater future success. If that is the case, we must stop the act of telling students they only have one chance to do it right. We must stop telling students they cannot try again. We must stop averaging student work by giving equal weight to first attempts as we do final attempts. Our job as educators is to both provide enduring knowledge today and to prepare students for success in the future.
I have heard the argument that the real world does not allow redos and retakes so as teachers we shouldn’t. Actually, the truth is, adults, get to redo failed marriages by entering into a new marriage. Adults can leave jails after being arrested and enter the workforce and civilized society again. All high-stakes standardized tests, the ACT, the SAT, and the GRE, allow for multiple attempts, retakes, and redos. Allowing for do-overs is what we do our entire life. Why is it that often it is only in our classrooms that we discourage this? We allow our kids to hop back on their bikes once they fall down; we allow toddlers to get back on their feet after stumbling when learning to walk. Why do we feel the need in our classrooms to limit opportunities for success and to hold initial failures and struggles against a child? Struggles and failures are opportunities for feedback and improvement. They cannot and should not be opportunities for labels and indictments.
A few years ago I heard this example, and it has stuck with me. Imagine that you are an instructor at a flight school. Your new young pilots are with you in a course learning flight safety and the “final” exam involves your students packing a parachute. Because you believe that assessment must be relevant, you will test your students’ skills by not just visually inspecting their chutes but by using them. Your course is a six-week course and every Friday you give a practice test just to measure student progress. The three students in your course earn the following grades:
- Student A: 95, 75, 82, 45, 35, 40,
- Student B: 62, 62, 62, 62, 62, 62
- Student C: 40, 35, 45, 82, 75, 95
The question is, which student do you want packing your chute. If you were to take each student’s grades and use the average score of the mean you would notice each student would earn a 62, but does this really reflect what has happened during the six weeks? At first glance, most people say “Student C” is the student they would want to pack their parachute which makes complete sense if you are planning your jump at the end of the six-week course. But what if you do a jump at the end of week 1? Does your answer change? When we look at these scores, we could argue that Student C has shown the most growth and has finally demonstrated he knows how to complete this life-changing skill. Early struggles should not be used against him. Student B has not improved or grown and probably should not be allowed anywhere near your parachute although he earned the same final average score. Student A may have known this skill all along and just got tired of the weekly performance checks. The bottom line is, your grades should not be an average of struggles and successes. It should reflect what is current and accurate to tell a clear story and provide relevant feedback.
Here is a challenge for your classroom. If you must give cumulative grades, count the most recent evidence a student gives you and simply provide feedback on prior attempts. Allow and encourage students to redo and improve initial attempts. We do it often in writing classes with rough drafts and final drafts. We need to encourage the same thing in all classes. When a child does make a mistake, remind him of the power of “Yet”. He will learn it. He just hasn’t yet. He must persist. He must try again. He must keep going. It is only by falling off that we can learn to get back up.
Read earlier chapters by visiting https://schmittou.net
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