Making Mistakes Marvelous

Tomas Edison, one of the greatest and most prolific inventors in human history took 10,000 attempts to create a light bulb, that's 10,000 failures, or 10,000 stepping stones to success. I am not Edison but after my first week back at school I felt like I had made 1000 mistakes, but for the first time I felt proud of them, in fact I boasted about them to my students all week.

From my own past experiences and what I have seen from past students, failure can shut down any further exploration or willingness to give it a go. Perhaps failure often instills a fear of failure. So this year I am determine to celebrate failure and turn it around from a dirty word into a positive word. So now I happily admit my every failure to my students and model how each mistake teaches me something new and provides an opportunity to improve. My catch phase this year is "count my mistakes to see how much I have learnt".  

My dream is that my students start their year of learning with a growth mindset that celebrates mistakes as learning opportunities.

“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy