Sunday, July 31, 2016

A osprey's wonderful first flight.

It's a wonderful and calming thing to see a bird take its first flight, isn't it?


Somebody told me once that every great and meaningful project requires a leap of faith.

Learning something new is just like learning to fly for a bird too.
We all learn fast naturally but often education stunts the process.

"Don't let education get in the way of your learning.", Mark Twain said.

All too often teachers won't allow students to make mistakes.
Mistakes are being stigmatized and the learning process is halted because the teacher intervenes where the student could have learned how to recover, cope, adjust and recalibrate.
This essential step is crucial to learning but micro-managing and having no faith in the student at all will remove almost all those benefits from making mistakes.

You can see in the video that the mother does not come immediately after he takes off but only after he had landed. This does not mean that the mother will not help when he is in need but she doesn't intervene too fast.

The Pygmalion effect states that the expectations you set for people influence those people's performance. This is tested in schools and workplaces. If you have no faith in your students then how do you expect your students to succeed?

Let's make learning fun again. Remove stigma from failure.
Let creativity free so you can come up with many ways to learn from your failure.
Look forward to learning coping and recovery strategies. Look forward to recalibrating your strategies.
This is how people who are good in something become great.
Have faith.

Take flight.