Resilience, the ability to bounce back and try again after something goes wrong, is key to being a successful learner. It also involves parking self-judgement, comparison with others and frustration at the door. Very young children have a natural resilience when it comes to learning; it’s how we all learned to walk and talk.
By the time I meet children in my classes, some of them still very young, this natural sense of resilience has sometimes been undermined with anxious feelings of inadequacy, self-judgement and fear of making a mistake.
As teachers (and I’m including parents and, in fact, all adults here), we need to model that in order to learn we will sometimes fail or fall. It is normal, to be expected and actually often where the best learning happens. The key to succeeding (within our own personal time-frame) is the resilience to keep getting back up, trying again - perhaps a little more skilfully - using what we have learned from failing.
Remember a time when you were a beginner or, better yet, experience it again first hand. My half-term spent in the French Alps on skis after a 20 year break prompted this blog. We can model to children that excuses aren’t helpful or necessary; I know that a dislike of heights, speed and the fact that I see risk everywhere make skiing a challenge to learn for me … but it doesn’t need to stop me practising and gradually improving. What keeps me getting back up after falling down is that I have ultimate faith (based on years of experience learning new things) that with guidance and, most importantly, repeated practice, I will grow in skill and also therefore in confidence.
To make children feel safe as learners, we need to teach them that whatever it is that they are trying to learn, focussed practice, guidance, and enough time (which will be different for each individual), will lead to small improvements. This in turn will lead to increased confidence and even mastery of the skill in the long term.
The guidance of a skilful tutor or teacher can reignite a child’s confidence to learn and foster a growing sense of resilience. As learners, there is no limit to how many times we are allowed to bounce back and try again, and every time we do is a cause for celebration.
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