From Assistant Principal Pastoral Care

Misteaks 

Any teacher or parent knows a bit about mistakes – their own and their child’s. There is ancient wisdom, of course, that we learn from our mistakes. In a classroom context, mistakes are absolutely vital to learning. A first attempt, with teacher’s guidance, grows into understanding. Happy days.  

Mistakes are great! The famous Michael Jordan quotation is inspirational, “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”  

What can be challenging in class is the not being prepared to make a mistake through an avoidance scenario. Kids can be great distractors or passive resisters. The teacher has to break this right down and track the reluctance, and then almost anything could be in play, from just a bad hair day through to very, very complex or bad stuff.   

I don’t think that there is an argument that mistakes are the opportunity for growth. But kids are kids and that all-consuming search for identity, self-centered developmental thinking and their lack of proportion can come to the fore.   

Spelling a word wrong and then learning to spell it right is one thing. The “bigger” mistakes are the real stuff of parenting and pastoral care. On cue (and I shouldn’t be flippant I suppose) enter wrong crowd, vaping, drugs, pornography, inappropriate relationships, alcohol, bullying… Most kids at some point make a “big” mistake.  

What happens next is interesting. And remember, for some kids “the mistake” is amidst an otherwise “stable” existence; for some their lives are chaotic and there are layers of complexity, trauma or disadvantage.  

What I reckon must be cornerstone, is that the young person knows that you love them regardless - nothing will be worked out if the child walks away (or will next time). This probably rules out blowing your stack, blame, I told you so, the guilt trip and so on. Kids’ eyes just glaze over. They live in the moment and the future often doesn’t mean much. Punishment gets attention but doesn’t often do much in the long run. 

What we try to do at school with restorative practice, the long game, has application to these “big” mistakes. Calm is good. Listening is good. Identifying all involved and how they are feeling is good. Collaboration with all the involved, if possible, is good. Accepting responsibility is very good. Repair is good. Planning for next time is good.  

The ‘big” mistakes are going to happen, it’s not helpful to feel guilty (you might be to a degree – but you can’t undo the past, only try to make the future better and you might be in front if your kid recognizes that you acknowledge that you aren’t perfect either). You can’t, and shouldn’t want to, wrap them in cotton wool. This strategy, for sure, will trigger really big mistakes, just as surely as the laissez faire (my thirteen-year-old is out overnight at a party, somewhere). The “warrior” approach, that is to take on the mistake and solve it yourself, is probably a missed opportunity to for the young person to learn, maybe even enables learned helplessness or entitlement. I’ve seen it, deal with it often.  

It's difficult. Most kids get through their “big mistake” pretty well with adult support and guidance. Some kids, however, don’t and their “big mistake” controls them, owns them, forms them. This is a tragedy. We must handle the big mistake well when it comes.  

Of course, some kids don’t get choices. Some kids have to find a way through the poor choices of others.   

I’m afraid that I have set myself up as the oracle again. I should acknowledge that I have taken most of the poor options outlined above at various times (but never laissez faire). Probably most guilty of the deluxe blow up followed by the warrior.  

But I’m still trying to learn from my mistakes.