I was working with a student one on one the other day. I noticed that he seemed much more confident with me than he did when I called on him in class. When I asked him why, he said, “we have a lot of very smart students in our class. I do not want to look dumb in front of them”.
To try to overcome this feeling that students have I started the year implementing the fifty-blunder challenge. That challenge is when the students catch me with fifty blunders then I buy them all donuts. Last week the fiftieth blunder was recorded (I probably blunder 50 other times that they missed), and my students enjoyed the donuts.
The message was that the person who made the most mistakes in the class was the teacher. If the teacher is making mistakes than students should feel comfortable making mistakes
What prevents many people
from asking questions is fear and self-doubt. How many great ideas, how
many great questions go unheard because people are scared? While it
would be great to promise you that nobody is going to judge you, the truth is
that there will always be the critics. What we need to do is tune out the
people who criticize us but are too afraid to take the risks themselves.
The second critic we
would need to shut out is ourselves. Many of us are our own worst critics
which often prevents us going beyond our potential. We need to realize that if we take risks that
we are going to find failure. The key is
how we handle this failure. Do we learn
from our mistakes? Do we fall like a
five and rebound like a ten?
This is not to say that we do not need constructive feedback. I am trying to put together a group of teachers who will watch each other teach, give constructive feedback which will help all of us improve+. All of us need to be vulnerable for this group to be truly successful and trust each other.
I will leave you with some questions you can ask yourself
as you try to change your mindset to be more comfortable taking risks. What did you disagree with today? What did you learn from somebody who disagreed with
you? What have you failed at
recently? Is there another way to
solve that problem?
The challenge is to make sure that the good questions and great ideas get out in the open. Without risks there can not be rewards
I agree with the last quote/comment that states "without risk, there cannot be reward" in the fact that if you do not take chances, you will not get anywhere. Personally, I am guilty of using the second critic, myself. For years, and still to this day I am constantly criticizing myself and my work. And because I do this, I am constantly overthinking about how i could make the assignment better or what could I do different to make things better. For myself, I do not take failure very kindly because I feel like most of the time I work 110% towards something and when I fail that task, I feel defeated because I am running through my head about what I could do different or how could I have succeeded. Throughout the day, especially with the term paper, I am always thinking about something on top of another thing and so on. But the fact is, I almost never slow down to look at the big picture or to look at things one at a time and I feel that has been a big factor to my self-criticism. Going into college next year, it is important to realize for myself that not everything is going to be the end of the world, and sometimes, we need to take a step back and look at the big picture and tackle the task at hand piece-by-piece.
ReplyDelete-Michael Berg
great self reflection
DeleteSome of my favorite kinds of quotes (yes I read quotes) have to do with getting back up and "rebounding like a 10" such as, "no matter how many times you get knocked down, can you get back up?" (spidergwynn - spiderman spiderverse). It is interesting how you put it. That if teachers mess up so much, then it is more than okay for students to mess up. Not only is it okay, but it is good because then we can ask ourselves those questions you added in the end. Most of time the reason why people don't answer, especially me, is because they are scared or don't think their input matters, is relevant, correct, etc. I have learned through my four years of watching others shine in their fear and confidence together, that you do indeed miss all the shots you don't take.
ReplyDelete-hershey
The social contract created by being inside of society leaves us open to both valuable and unnecessary criticisms. This feedback loop can be easily listened to too heavily as our nature of wanting perfection out of ourselves. It is up to us, as the individual receiving the criticism to filter out the nonconstructive from the constructive. I disagree with a lot of things on a day to day basis but none more than those who support the continuation of the overreaching of power in the current United States Government. Something is have slowly learned over time from those i disagree with is the slow inevitable socialization of society from conservative to more liberal as time goes on. Something i failed at recently is getting cut from Varsity Lacrosse, there is no solution to this problem as i am a senior and my time has ended, Go Redbirds!
ReplyDelete-Henry Jones
I agree with this and it makes a lot of sense because this transitions into events where people pressure and convince others to "go first". The main conflict is fear and the want to fit in. Students, friends, and others do not want to be the first to mess up in anything, but once someone else messes up, they will proceed to give it a try and see how they perform. A factor residing within this is confidence because there will always be people who judge. In society, failure has been shamed and frowned upon and there is a set expectation to always succeed. I do not like the expectation to succeed because I think you learn more when you fail. When you succeed you will always try the same thing, but when you fail you will expand your horizons and try new things.
ReplyDelete- keegan byrd
DeleteIn certain environments, having competition amongst peers in the scholastic realm is can be helpful. It could challenge students to consider other ideas or express their own for the sake of acknowledgement of others - including the teacher. Often I find my biggest critic is myself, and I use that as motivation. knowing my strengths and weaknesses and expanding/ improving on them helps me to better my educational standings.
ReplyDelete-Amondo Lemmon (I would like to take the vocab quiz)
I agree with this, because I can relate to this. The feeling of not looking stupid in front of others or the fear of embarrassment. In front of my fellow peers I wouldn't want to be the first to make a mistake or leave a bad first impression because I would be remembered for that mistake which could lead to many more mistakes. Society deems failure in a negative way when it should be used to improve oneself. I believe that we should use our failures to move towards success instead of looking at the negative aspects of failure.
ReplyDeleteBrandon Hawkins
DeleteI can testify to this, especially when you stated that many of us are our own worst critics. I often judge myself too harshly at times when I want to ask a question. In addition, I tend to think my extra questions are a burden to the teacher sometimes. Consequently, I think to myself, "just forget it," leaving some of my hardest questions to go unanswered. I realize now that there is no harm in asking a question. A question can only benefit, depending on how you perceive it. This is why I enjoy disagreement because disagreement has a high probability to lead to enlightenment, sometimes for both parties. I have been told that I like to argue, and of course, at the time I tried to deny and defend myself, but now looking back on that statement, I realize that is actually not a problem at all. It takes the truly humble people to be ok with being wrong or right for the greater good, not to feel invulnerable.
ReplyDelete-Izzy Nnadozie
As a slightly more outgoing person than others in the grade, I can confirm that without risks there is no reward. In school, participating in class discussion is a great way to show to your teacher that you are engaged, and are willing to express your opinion and show what you learned. In govt specifically, the clashing of students as they discuss their political parties and their personal views becomes rather tense. It takes a very smart man to understand their opposition's viewpoint, but regardless respect it yet politely disagree.
ReplyDelete-ryan kowalczyk