When a mistake is part of the process

When I first started this blog post, it was about making mistakes. Or maybe failing.

It was about thinking I had put together a good research assignment, and realizing I hadn't. That I didn't really make someting that embodies my principles and my ideas about learning and teaching - something that would encourage students to follow their curiosity and explore an idea deeply over time. I made a research project that would make them rush superficially through too much ground to cover in the time I allotted.

This post was originally going to be about how it feels, as a teacher, to recognize you have made a mistake and then have to decide whether to live with now and fix it for next time, or to own it now and make some changes  now. 

The answer of course, is to own it and change it now. I hardly ever do the same exact assignment twice, so in a practical way, for me, waiting didn't make sense.
Waiting to make things better if you can also doesn't make sense.

Most importantly, though, being willing to model owning my error is probably the best thing I could do for my students, who are petrified of making mistakes.

So I will do that.

But as I was walking on the beach this beautiful morning, thinking and rethinking about things i want to write about, I realize that the subject here isn't really making mistakes. Or failing. It's about the process of creating - of making things.

Teaching and learning are both processes of making things. They are messy and chaotic and should be a constant oscillation between vision and revision.

I want students to be engaged in making every day. Making themselves. Finding new little pieces of insight and understanding that puts a wholer world in within their understanding.

As a human being, I try to do that every day - learn a little something that gives me a little more of the world.

As a teacher, I create the circumstances that facilitate that important work of our becoming.
If I am not creating assignments that contribute to growth and understanding, I have lost my purpose and my way.

Part of that process of creating is the vision. And part is the revision. It's the same as any other creative activity. When people talk about teaching as an art, it makes perfect sense. Not just because teaching is more than data and information and picking out the right pre-made questions on a story or the right problems for the test. Like any art, true and good teaching is a creative act. So is true and meaningful learning. Both bring something new into the world. Creative teaching creates opportunities to change the way people see the world, and themselves, in some way. Creative learning takes advantage of those opportunities, creating a new depth of understanding, a new layer of being.

The mistake I was thinking I made turns out not to be a mistake at all; it was a part of the process. Not changing it would have been a mistake. Stopping in the middle of the process would have been a mistake.

Working through a work in progress - that's creation.