Mind-Set No. 6 Feedback is your friend
lf mistakes are really opportunities to learn something, then feedback is absolutely essential to self-correction and classroom mastery. To the degree that you allow input from qualified others, and apply the input, you'll improve. Teaching means you must be willing to be a student yourself. In fact, your students will learn from you at the rate that you learn from them.
If you're trying out new things in the classroom, you can expect to have many experiences that don't turn out the way you hoped. With each new class, teachers start the learning process all over again to determine how individual students think and organize their reality. The best way to get to know your students is ask them questions or to try a new method with them that naturally leads to some unsuccessful outcomes.
A more useful label for failure, hence, is feedback. Success comes easier knowing that failure is no longer possible only outcomes or feedback.
Correction, without invalidation, is indeed one of the real keys to mastery. Masters use such statements as "Wow, I learned how not to do it that time!” or "Wow, this is an apparent mess. What can learn from this?" Reframing the meaning of the word failure and replacing it with the word lesson or gift will move students closer to their goals.
One of the greatest baseball players who ever lived was the Japanese legend Sadahara Oh. In spite of his unparalleled success, Oh was so committed to growth that he went to his teacher to get coaching after each ball game. This meant being up, after a day's workout and a night game, from midnight until two in the morning to get tutored. His mind-set was that of a champion: feedback was his key to mastery. For the master teacher, feedback is the lifeblood of continuous improvement.