We practice everything in school. Math facts. Routines. Spelling words. Keyboarding. Basketball. Soccer. Vocabulary. Practice, practice, practice. But what do we really need to practice? Struggle. Failure. Making mistakes. Because the thing about practicing is you learn from it. You get better. You improve. Life is full of those moments. If we try to keep them out of our classrooms and keep learning safe and easy, then we keep learning out of our classrooms, too. We think when our kids succeed immediately, we’ve done our jobs. Our job is not to show kids the right answers. Our job is to allow our kids to experience failure, learn from it, and facilitate growth. Nobody said it would be easy. But, it’s worth it.
