Those Awkward Disappointments
Last Saturday night, after our Wildcats lost to San Diego by a single point in overtime, there was a scuffle between students and police. Bottles were thrown. Words were exchanged. It made the national news. Awkward.
The “riot” was the talk of the town and the next day, when my daughter and I went to get pedicures, everyone was discussing it in the shop. The owner, who is obviously a guru of life and not just toes, said, “These kids are taught that they have to always succeed. If they can’t be perfect they don’t want to do it. They don’t know what to do when they’re disappointed except to get mad at someone and throw things.”
That’s a hard lesson and one that students don’t necessarily get at school, what with high stakes testing at the pre-college level and pressure to perform to keep scholarships later on. I have had college students drop classes rather than get a B and even contest grades of 96% on projects.
Recently, there was a wonderful article on Edutopia, Teaching Students to Embrace Mistakes. The authors, Hunter Maats and Katie O’Brien discussed how emotional reactions to mistakes keep students from learning from them and drew parallels to the deliberate practice of a musician.
Mistakes are the most important thing that happens in any classroom, because they tell you where to focus that deliberate practice.
For most of us musicians that is a Duh statement. We know we must practice performing before the big concert or competition and record ourselves so we can both energy and time wisely. We’ve learned it over many years and many awkward situations.
Parents often don’t know this. Students who have had 3 teachers in the last year and whose Mom says, “they just didn’t understand my Johnny,” are a case in point. When new students come into our studios, we need to help them to understand the cause of a mistake and then reward them for not only fixing it but applying the fix to new situations. That way we put the focus on progress and improvement rather than awkwardness and shame. We remove or at least minimize the emotional response.
Sometimes it works magnificently and sometimes I fail- awkwardly. But I’ve learned it’s important to keep putting the focus on learning from mistakes and shortcomings no matter the outcome. Can I keep students and their parents from comparing themselves to others and becoming discouraged? No. But, I know it’s critical to allow myself and others to be human beings rather than superheroes or victims of their own disappointments and failures.
