“It is well to cultivate a friendly feeling towards error, to treat it as a companion inseparable from our lives, as something having a purpose which it truly has.” Maria Montessori
This Winter I gave Language exams to aspiring teachers at the Montessori Teacher Education Institute of Atlanta. I have been through the process twice myself, so I know firsthand how nerve wracking it is. You pick a lesson out of a hat (out of what feels like 1,000) and have to present the lesson to the examiner pretending you are showing it to a child. It’s a lot of pressure! I expected anxiety levels to be high.
One woman approached the basket of lessons, worry etched on her face. She drew one of the most advanced, difficult lessons: Function of Words - The Adjective. She froze. Slowly, she got herself together and walked over to the Language shelf. She was able to surmise the section with Function of Words lessons and selected a tray. She brought it to the table. She began the lesson and about halfway through she froze again, realizing she’d forgotten scissors. A crucial piece of the work. However, instead of panicking, freezing, or crying, she carried on. Instead of cutting the piece of paper, she tore it, which was not ideal, but was also not the end of the world.
After finishing she was so hard on herself for making a mistake. We put such pressure on ourselves, especially Montessori teachers, to present lessons perfectly - exactly as it’s written in our manual with slow, graceful movements, and precision. Catherine McTamaney describes this pressure perfectly:
“We ask the unattainable of ourselves because we want the best for ourselves. We want to be perfect teachers. We want to do things right the first time. We want not to have to face failure. Montessori, though, is about the process of learning, not the product. We must see ourselves as travelers on the same path as the children in our classroom. When we offer ourselves that same grace, we model it for the children. We can extend grace and forgiveness and authentic love to the children in our care because we have experienced it firsthand toward ourselves.” (The Tao of Montessori, 25)
Sara Blakely, a successful entrepreneur and founder of the women’s clothing line Spanx, describes how she remembers growing up her dad would ask the kids in her family at dinner what they had failed at that day. If they hadn’t failed at anything, that was the real problem because it meant they hadn’t tried.
While it’s important to study and show lessons carefully and with great purpose it can also be invaluable to show our students that we’re human - we all make mistakes. When we make a mistake and own up to it, we have the power to cultivate resilience and a growth mindset. When we do this we teach an even more important lesson than the one we set out to. People who try and fail tend to achieve a lot more than those who never try at all.
Carol Dweck has done extensive research on the effects of having a growth versus a fixed mindset. She noticed that some students rebounded after failures or setbacks, while others were devastated and defeated. “When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement.” (mindsetworks.com/science)
Teachers tend to be perfectionists. Especially Montessori teachers. We take our responsibility seriously. However, if we focus less on the outcome of the lesson, and more on the process, if we laugh at ourselves when we forget the scissors and carry on anyway, we have the opportunity to share our enthusiasm instead of our anxiety. We have the opportunity to kick our shame and stoke our student’s curiosity, leaving a larger impact than the original lesson ever would have.
“Our lives, like the materials on the shelf, are self-correcting, if we pay close enough attention. Realize that the errors in our lives, like a mistake made with a material, is not our essence but a lesson to be learned in our own growth.” (The Tao of Montessori, 26)
