THE BIRTHRIGHT TO MAKE MISTAKES, IV

Here comes the dawn.  I’ll go out walking later.  I was just sitting at my fish pond, feeling, slowly sipping a cup of hot, freshly brewed coffee, silently listening to the music of the waterfalls.  You know, there’s something empowering and inspiring about the silence of the dawn.   For me, it’s the stillness that really speaks to the inner-most me, that causes me to ponder meaning and purpose, when I feel a depth beyond my title, position, and resume.  It’s a feeling, non-thinking time for practicing getting in touch, noticing, listening, being alert, paying attention, and being aware.  Think about it, it’s a new world coming to light; there’s new life being born this moment. Today is like a bud in my rose garden about to burst open and sweeten the air.  It’s a process of renewal that should be lovingly embraced and used to open doors to new opportunities.  Again, I will say over and over and over, it is the ultimate sin not to open, embrace, and enrich with meaning and purpose the present that is presented by the present.

This morning I was “feeling” a journal entry from a student in the creative arts.  I had talked to her several times in attempts to help her pull herself out from her doldrums and overcome her apparent semester-long apathy.  After our last conversation, this is what she wrote in a rare journal entry:  “You said that I’m disrespecting myself by not giving it everything I have, by not caring about this class or my community or myself.  It’s not that.  It’s just hard for me to come up with ideas at times because History has never been my best subject and I am not all that creative and I was more worried about whether or not we’d do the project wrong or what we did would be good enough where you would like it or whether or not we would have to do it again because we didn’t follow a rule here or there. I don’t have an I don’t care attitude and never did…it’s just that when I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing because things like History aren’t my forte, sometimes it seems that way I guess.   I can’t help it.  I just go silent and slide quietly into my corner to hide in the shadows.  It always has just seemed easier and safer to do it this way.   But, now that you’ve seen me, you’ve got me thinking.  I guess it’s not whether it’s easier or safer; I ‘m really just afraid to go anywhere new and make any mistakes and get yelled at as I always have and get put down as I always have and spoil my grade.  I know you won’t do that.  You don’t.  You care about me.  You see me.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t have talked to me.  You wouldn’t have listened.  I know all that.  But, I can’t stop thinking and feeling this way and that is messing with my grade anyway.   I guess I’ll just have to settle with that.  You won’t make that easy for me to do, will you.   Damn you for talking to me and giving a damn like no one else has.  Damn you.  Damn you.  Damn you for wanting to get me to pull myself out from my corner.  Now, you’ve made it harder to blame you like I always did my others teachers…..”

That is what’s called summing up everything I’ve been saying lately:  a resurrection of accumulated slurs and slights that have created the learned fear and helplessness of what my dear friend, Todd Zakrajsek, would say is the proverbial “dog in the corner” syndrome that allows this student in the creative arts to make and accept the excuse that she’s not creative.  And, by no stretch of the imagination is she alone.  So, here I am, at the keyboard, feeling.  If I have learned one thing from reading this and untold number of student journals, it is this:  if I want a student to have a shot at learning, really learn rather than merely temporarily holding on to a few noght-before crammed facts for passing a test and/or acquiring a less than meaningful grade, if I want a student to have a shot at deep and lasting learning, if I want a student to develop wholly,  if I want a student to become a good person as well as a good student, if I want a student to plant Dweck’s “growth mind-set” and develop Seligman’s “resilience” and get into Csíkszentmihályi’s “flow” and offer Amabile’s self “positive praise,” if I want to be an inviting and embracing nurturer rather than a distant and cold weeder, I constantly have to search for answers to one question, “Do I really want to take the demanding time and effort to understand and deal with what is causing a student to look for obstacles rather than the magic, to offer big excuses rather than take a small step, to put energy into avoiding effort rather than putting energy into the effort, and to “settle with that”  rather than “going for it.”   You see, it’s not enough to have possibilities at your fingertips, you have to work at them and breathe life into them–if you want them to happen.  No, if you want miracles to fall into your lap, you just may have to get up and change your seat.

Louis

THE BIRTHRIGHT TO MAKE MISTAKES, III

Can’t sleep.  Susan’s on my mind.  She’s hurting.  Don’t want to go to China and leave my “angel in disguise.”  Struggling not to be a hypocrite and live the Johnny Mercer’s lyrics sung by Bing Crosby and the Andrew Sisters in 1945:  “You’ve got to accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative; And latch on to the affirmative….You’ve got to spread joy up to the maximum; bring gloom down to the minimum….”   That’s also how we help students learn that it’s okay to make mistakes and how critical it is to learn from those mistakes.   Of course, we have to learn that ourselves.  Until we do, there will be little or no joy in Mudville.  And, until there is joy, there won’t be much of a life, few eyes open to opportunities, little enthusiasm, lots of negativity, lots of misery, and less achievement–much less meaningful achievement.

Let’s talk about the students, but really also talk about ourselves.  It’s actually a matter of how students see themselves.  I read their daily journals, about 120 a day; I talk a lot with a lot of them; I read their body language and facial expressions.  I help many of them with their academic and non-academic issues:  the relentless pressure to perform; the mistaken belief that “grades oft proclaim the man;” backs against the wall; cramming; sleep deprived; afraid;  holes burned in dreams; on the defensive;  harried; subserviently insecure; lots of “cowardice” and little boldness; in a frenetic race; feeling they have no life; wasting time and energy worrying; senses on full alert as if some predator is in the vicinity about to pounce on them.  It all goes under the name of FEAR!  They so often are fighting against themselves, discouraged, making themselves miserable, and undermining their own potential.  Think I’m  exaggerating?  Not if you read student journals every day as I do.

It doesn’t have to be that way.  The secret is to catch the positive energy that transforms stumbling blocks into stepping stones.  But, how?  How do we help push forward rather than hold back?   There’s the rub, as the Bard would say.  Teresa Amabile talks of helping to generate “positive feelings.”  Carol Dweck’ offers insights into “the right kind of praise” and the need to foster a “growth-mind-set.” Ed Deci’s offering is autonomy, ownership, and connection.  Daniel Goleman’s suggestion is to help students develop their “social intelligence” and “emotional intelligence.”   Martin Seligman talks of boosting resilience.  Richard Boyatzis requires we become “resonant leaders.”  Mihali Csíkszentmihályi wants us to help students learn how to go with what he calls “the flow.”

They are all slices of the same pie:  getting to the soul of education, running a humanistic institution that knows it’s in the people business, teaching to the whole person we call a student.  The latest brain-based research is attuning us to the larger reality.  We’re all learning from the latest “brainology,’–or, we should be–that the brain it is like a muscle—the more anyone exercises it, the stronger it becomes. Every time anyone works hard and learns something new, the brain forms new connections that, over time, makes that person “smarter.” That is, intellectual, social, and emotional growth and achievement is largely in anyone’s hands. These few prominent researchers I’ve mentioned, then, all agree in one way or another that three qualities can turn adversity into advantage.  The first is boundless hope.  That is, a positive perspective on ourselves and others;  don’t think of any mistake as final; think there is more to come; don’t take making a mistake personal; don’t let making a mistake be a discouraging, momentum stopper.   Second, don’t waste the mistake.  Reflect on it in order to discover the lesson within and let that knowledge be a guide  to later and better efforts.  And finally, persevere.  Try, try, try again; just be wiser each time.   Make no mistake; it’s easier said than done, for habits formed over years generally don’t disappear overnight.

Yet, if we can start doing that for ourselves, if, to paraphrase Aristotle, we can help students start entertaining a mistake without accepting it, if we can help them listen to a mistake without losing self-confience, if we can offer such “roadside assistance,” we will have helped start developing our and their social and emotional intelligences in order to “accentuate the positive; eliminate the negative.”  I know.  It’s a lot of “ifs.”  One last “if.”  If we have the faith, hope, belief, and love, as Rumi said, if we can “Borrow the Beloved’s eyes,” we’ll “look through them and you’ll see the Beloved’s face everywhere.”  Then, “things you have hated will become helpers.”  That’s what we need to do; that’s what students need to do.  When that happens, that’s when the magic begins and miracles start occurring.

Louis

THE BIRTHRIGHT TO MAKE MISTAKES, II

Where was I?  My eyes are getting bloodshot from proofing the pages for Random Thoughts, IV on top of everything else as the semester-ending stuff piles up and I prepare to head out for a month-long teaching gig in China.  As I read my reflections from a decade ago, I see that I saw then as I see now that learning, changing, and growing isn’t always easy, convenient, and uncomfortable  And certainly, they are not and cannot be mistake-free!  I’ve learned that if I am going to get up in the morning with a “yes,” I better be ready for an “oops.”  I don’t think there’s anything more useless and wasteful than going to sleep at the end of a day with a self-congratulatory, “Whew, I didn’t mess up today.”  The choice, then, as it is now, is not to make or not make mistakes; it is whether we make mistake into a barrier that stops us in our steps or an opportunity to take steps to correct, reflect, learn, grow, and improve.  Being afraid to make mistakes results in a blind alley of paralyzing stasis.  Refusing to grow, especially from mistakes, induces atrophy;  Allowing mistakes to erode self-confidence creates the pain of stagnation.  Most of us want to focus on our strengths and accomplishments, and both pretend we don’t have any weaknesses and don’t face up to any mistakes.  But, growth, growing forward, always comes with “growing pains.”  It’s not a smooth, seamless, straight, and certainly not a mistake-free ride.  It means we make a great mistake when we mistakenly play down the value of mistakes both for ourselves and others.  We are mistaken when we don’t live and teach the dictum that there’s no better teacher than mistake.  As I read journal entry after journal entry over the years, it’s easy to see that we academics so play the education game as if it is a game of perfection that most students, unable to ascend to those divine heights, respond to by withdrawing or shriveling, by working less, by cutting corners more, all with an offering of a host of rationalizations, chief of which are:  “There isn’t enough time,” or “I’m not good at” or “It’s too hard” or “I’m not smart enough” or “I tried, but….” or “I did my best, but…” or “So and so doesn’t like me.”  They give themselves excuses for giving up; they talk themselves into being helpless. They act as if the deck was stacked against them or the teacher didn’t like them.  They start sitting around after an initial setback.  They make it, without assistance, into crushing disappointment.  They acquire a dog-in-the-corner “learned helplessness.”  Rather than face the possibility of that pain again, students find that it’s easier to stop coming to class or drop the course or even change a major, or, sometimes, regrettably drop out of school altogether.  They put themselves in a position where they can preserve the illusion of success rather than risk making more mistakes.  By the time they get to college, most students have traded their dreams and aspiration for safety and illusion of security.  They focus on their fear of what might happen.  They look for that safe niche.  They’re afraid to doing what it takes to touch their potential because they don’t want to risk making mistakes involved with reaching for and stretching and threaten their grade.  So, they do everything they can do avoid exposing themselves to the risk of making mistakes, to having fingers pointed at them, to being condemned.  And the real tragedy is that because of their fear and doubt, they stifle new possibilities within themselves.  They can’t see things beyond what they might imagine.

Now, before I go any farther, let’s not get haughty.  Let’s be honest. First, we don’t often help the situation.   I saw and still see that when we fail to prepare students to make mistakes, we are preparing them to fail.  Second, we academics and administrators do the same thing more often than not when we fall into the same trap ourselves–especially if we’re in quest for promotion and/or tenure or an appointment or a reward.  So, let’s think twice before we fault the students.  Too many of us have habits that achievement likes doing but mistakes don’t like to do.

Back to the students.  Most have a short-cut mindset, a cover-up the mistake mentality with “I’m sorry” or “I apologize.”  Someone once said, it escapes me who, that it’s as if they don’t know what they want in life, but are willing to go through hell to get it.  They don’t consider the possibility that their mistake indicates they may need study skills or time management skills or communication skills or people skills or just to bear down more: they need a purpose, a focus.  They think only of the accusation, humiliation, and embarrassment they felt.  But, most students need more of uplifting than putting down.  What most students need most, then, is a care package for their spirits.  And so, if we are to truly teach what it takes to achieve, we ought to include the truth that it takes making mistakes and the need to learn how to respond to and learn from those mistakes.  We have to help them understand that making the mistake is not the mistake.  The real mistake is letting fear prevent you from doing whatever it takes at all.  Making the mistake is letting fear prevent you from confidently working on the next assignment.  It would be, as it has been for so long, a mistake to do otherwise.  The best way to teach students to succeed is to teach them how to make mistakes. Again, we have to teach them the meaning of that adage:  if you want to achieve, you have to have the courage to fail.  I am positive that we have to help students learn to have a positive attitude.

After all, if getting everything you want on the first try is success, and everything else is failure, then we all fail much more often than we succeed. People who learn how to grow from unsuccessful efforts are far more likely to succeed.  They, we, have to learn a new definition for “mistake;” we have to stop personalizing mistake, that is, to separate “me” from mistake; we have to change our response to making a mistake; we have to prevent “mistake” from getting inside us and eating at us like a parasite; we have to bid farewell to yesterday and greet today joyously; we have weaken the weaknesses that we allow to weaken us.  How do we do that?  Well, that’s for page two.

Louis