A big part of working with students is creating an environment that makes them feel safe to stretch and make some mistakes along the way.
Recently my Edutopia article “Highlighting ‘Good’ Mistakes in Student Work” was shared on Twitter. One comment suggested that a teacher should be careful about publicly sharing mistakes to avoid embarrassing students. Absolutely, a mistake-friendly classroom environment should be well established before publicly discussing errors. A student must feel psychologically safe before opening up to the vulnerability of sharing mistakes.
In a TED interview, Harvard University professor Amy Edmonson defined psychological safety as “a climate in which one feels one can be candid. It’s a place where interpersonal risks feel doable, interpersonal risks like speaking up with questions and concerns and half-baked ideas and even mistakes.”
How can a teacher establish such an environment where students feel free to be themselves?
