I have been writing my whole life: journals, school assignments, lesson plans, articles, freelance articles and copy, and most recently, essays as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for FEE’s Education Entrepreneurship Lab. I generally feel confident as a writer. However, when I was tasked with writing an essay this month, I noticed some avoidance. This assignment was more academic in nature than what I usually write. As silly as it sounds, the works cited page, something I haven’t made since my college days in the early 2000s, had me questioning all my skills. I noticed my procrastination as the deadline neared and wondered how best to get myself over this hurdle.
“Done is better than perfect” has become a mantra I like to use with my students. It came to mind as I sat at my laptop to finish the essay at last. As I tried my best to remember the proper way to cite sources and look up whether any rules had changed in the last two decades, I thought about the team who would edit my essay. I had to laugh at myself a bit when I realized I was genuinely worried about what they would think of me if my sources were incorrectly cited.
“Mistakes are how we learn,” I had to remind myself as I sent off the essay draft, trusting that my editor would help me improve rather than scoff at me.
What a vulnerable feeling to be a beginner—again! And yet, how do we ever gain new skills if we won’t step into that place of not knowing?
I love the concept Dr. Becky Kennedy teaches that she calls the learning space. This is the gap between not knowing and knowing, and she teaches that the more we normalize this space for our kids, the more resilient our kids become. She also explains that the longer we can tolerate being in this space, the more successful we will be. The reason we have to tolerate it is that the learning space is full of trenches and hurdles including avoidance, discomfort, self-doubt, insecurity, perfectionism, and vulnerability—the place I was in when trying to write my essay.
So how do we create spaces where kids truly feel safe enough to make mistakes? Where they trust that the adults around them want to help rather than hurt? Why does the fear of being wrong sometimes cripple us to where we stay on the sidelines rather than fully engaging in an experience?
I recently added a tool to our age 5–8 learning space. It’s an idea I borrowed from Alpha School called the Fail Button. I bought a battery-powered trivia buzzer like this one and explained to the kids that this is a special button to celebrate failure. When something doesn’t go the way we wanted or we make a mistake, we can hit the Fail Button and celebrate that mistakes are how we learn. We tried it the first time when we were making rockets. This is a group that has had its share of meltdowns when the staple is in the wrong spot or the paper was folded the wrong way, so I was excited to see how the button helped. The shift was exactly what I hoped. When one child was on the verge of tears at the realization that he had glued his rocket fin in the wrong spot, I asked, “Do you want to try to fix it, or do you want to hit the button first?” His eyes lit up, and he ran to the button with a big grin on his face.
The Fail Button ritual is effective for younger students because it is concrete and playful. However, while older students are continuing to develop the ability to rebound from their own mistakes, they are also learning the skill of receiving and implementing more external feedback.
For older students, I recommend 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People by Dr. David Yeager. In it, Yeager describes something called wise feedback, a research-backed method of delivering constructive criticism in a way that communicates both high standards and belief in the recipient’s capabilities to rise to the standards. Rather than the popular “compliment sandwich,” where criticism is often delivered with unrelated compliments on either side of it, wise feedback uses three components:
- Establish high standards
- Express confidence in the student’s abilities
- Give actionable, specific guidance
In other words, wise feedback explicitly reminds students that we are here to learn, that learning will require the discomfort of not knowing or not being good at something, and that we want to help them move through that space. Both the Fail Button and the wise feedback normalize the learning space. It tells students, “You are safe here while you learn.”
It is important that we as educators not forget the courage it takes not to know something. My experience with writing the academic essay reminded me of what it feels like to share my work with someone who might think poorly of my skills or efforts. My own avoidance was rooted in insecurity, perfectionism, and probably some cognitive overload, but it could have been interpreted by an authority figure as laziness, disinterest, or resistance. Intentionally finding areas in our lives where we can be beginners helps us remain empathetic, effective educators.
