One of the big points in my workshops is fixing teachers fears of making mistakes. There are plenty of tricks to use and usually it works out very well with plenty of “Ah, I see”s by the end. One of the simplest tricks is to do the “stand up”, “sit down” thing, but get them really revved up to do it really quickly. Then do a “3-2-1” countdown and as you raise your hands you say “sit down”. Some teachers will always stand up. Then I do a shocked face and say “But in Junior High School you were all taught that making mistakes was wrong. Just now some of you did make mistakes, oh no, what are we going to do?”. It’s all tongue in cheek but the teachers quickly pick up on how absurd being afraid is. From then on I do the “People who don’t make mistakes aren’t trying hard enough” line and really praise any teachers who try, but get it wrong, later on.

One teacher came up to me the other day and was saying how she once corrected a boy several times for making the same mistake, and now the class refuses to try at all. “I tell them “Don’t be afraid of making mistakes””, she said, “But they don’t listen”.

That’s where the problem lies. It’s not that they “shouldn’t be afraid of making mistakes”, that’s too wishy washy and doesn’t stick, you should be telling your kids “Make mistakes!”. Tell them mistakes are mandatory in class!

As Larry Brilliant ( the guy hired by Google to donate 1 billion of their dollars to charity) says in this month’s Wired magazine “If I have a 100 percent batting average, you should fire me, because it means we haven’t tried anything really noble”