The Mistake That Led to a Great Lesson

I used to tell my art students that some of the best art comes from mistakes. It seems the same is true for teaching. If we can be flexible enough to recognize the lesson in mistakes, we can go a long way with our students.

Last summer I taught a class to an outstanding group of pre-service secondary teachers at a local university. Each day I explored with them the ins and outs of teaching. In order to prepare for the class, I met with the instructor who would be working with the elementary cohort. David is a tall, distinguished-looking gentleman of Mexican descent who wears golf caps and sweater vests and swears like a sailor. He immediately put me at ease during our first meeting and we devised our plan for the first day of class. The elementary and secondary cohorts would meet together on this day, so he and I would co-teach.

I’m a big fan of co-teaching but had little opportunity during my career to practice it. David and I decided which activities we each would lead and went our separate ways. One of my tasks was to facilitate the “birthday lineup,” an icebreaker that I’ve done with groups in the past. Participants line up by birth month and date silently.

I had read a twist on this activity where everyone in the group states their name and birthday, then the facilitator tells them to silently, and without gesturing, line up by birthday. I thought this subtle twist would be fun to try with this group.

On the first day of class, I was more nervous than I’d ever been on any first day of school. I was excited to meet my students and to work with David. I ran into him in the hallway and he pointed out how his hands were shaking—he was nervous too. “After 30 years of teaching I still get the shakes,” he said. I immediately felt better.

We walked into the room, introduced ourselves and started off with our first activity. When it was my turn to lead the birthday line, I stepped in front of the group and gave them directions. “I would like everyone in the circle to say their name and their birth day and month.” Before the first student began, David politely asked if he could interject and began introducing the original version of the birthday game. I rolled with it as he basically took over what was supposed to be “my” activity.

During our debriefing, I mentioned that in teaching, there are many routes to the same objective. I explained how I was planning to do the activity, what was different from how David led it, and how we still reached the same objective. I compared it to the teaching that they would soon be doing. It was an example of how the craft requires teachers to constantly re-evaluate their work in order to best suit their students. David and I were completely transparent as we discussed this “mistake” in our co-teaching. Thinking I was nervous and had blown the activity, David jumped in to save me with the purest of intent. But because of this we were able to model flexibility in teaching and the value of mistakes. We couldn’t have planned it better.

Ryan Fear is a high school dean of students in Oregon.