Not Yet, Try Again!

Author's note: Decided to return to one of my drafts to finish up this article in celebration of Teachers' Day. I will continue the original intended sequel to the P is for P__ article next week. Maybe.

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The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. ~ Thomas Edison

During my time as a Cub Scout Leader, I had the honour and privilege of leading a team in reviewing and later rolling out a new Cub Scout Programme across the country. We were proud to have been able to design the programme to be inclusive, allowing even Cub Scouts with special physical or mental needs to also excel in the programme.

One of the things we had repeatedly emphasised to teachers then was that every requirement for all the badges in our programme was not assessed on a "Pass" or "Fail", rather they are only to be assessed on a "Great job" or "Not yet, try again" basis. The premise was inspired by the ethos of the Scout Promise, the opening phrase of which, is "I promise that I will do my best..."

The idea was that every requirement was to be adjusted to suit the individual Cub's physical and mental ability. The teacher who was expected to know each Cub under his charge well, will have a good sense of whether he had indeed done his best to fulfil the requirement. A Cub Scout who usually does not draw well, is not required to produce a piece worthy of an A* grade in an Art Exam. He simply needs to show that he has pushed himself to do better than usual in order to receive a "Great Job", a pat on the back and an endorsement that he has "passed" the requirement.

If the Cub had not, the teacher will give him a "Not yet" rating and encourage him by telling him that we believe and are confident that he can do better. What we noticed is that in most cases instead of giving up, the Cub tries harder than teachers expect them to, sought help or advice on their own initiative and outperforms himself far beyond his own imagination.

Each time a Cub repeats a similar task after getting a "Great job", he is expected to outperform his last submission by trying harder. A progression regardless of how small is expected and success celebrated. The result of learning from mistakes or failure is progress. Improvement.

If you learn from your mistakes, then it’s okay to make them. ~ Fiery Serpent

For several years now, the world had been crippled by the idea of protecting every students' self esteem. Psychologists were still clamouring to dish out findings from their studies about how those with low self esteem would perform poorly in all aspects of his life and in many cases, lead to suicide.

Teachers were called upon to focus on boosting the egos and self esteems of all their charges. Years later while I trained as a psychologist (in 2000 before I became a teacher), I hypothesised and discussed at length about the counter-activity of focussing too much on boosting one's self esteem. Telling children that they are smart will almost always backfire!

Too often children are told that they are smart when they perform a newly learnt task regardless of the results produced. The intention was to encourage effort but subconsciously children learn that all they needed to do was to repeat the task in the exact same way to replicate the result and repeatedly receive approval.

They learn quickly to worry about looking stupid so everything would revolve around whether it looks smart or not. They learn that there was no need to innovate or try a different method.

Inadvertently students are trained to accept mediocrity and they are never challenged to reach their fullest potential. They grow up afraid of challenges. Each time they face difficulty they fold easily because their game plan is not on the win, rather on the avoidance of losing. Challenges expose them to unnecessary risks, displaces the status quo, unmasks their deficiency and cause them to feel stupid.

Students who grow up with a "Not yet, try again" teacher on the other hand are the complete opposite. They view challenges as a means to develop their deficiency, a means to attempt something they are weak at in a safe environment. They learn that failure does not mean the opposite of smart, it just means one gets to try again.

People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to. ~ George Allen, Sr.

I discovered three key reasons that mediocrity is tolerated in schools (and probably in the office as well):

The Path Of Least Resistance

It's all too easy for a busy teacher to look the other way when a student's work is tolerable but not great. Since the work is not a disaster, it falls into a murky grey area that one can get by with.

Best To Avoid Conflict

Who wants conflict, if you can avoid it? A teacher can often avoid conflict simply by not dealing with it, but there is a high cost to such avoidance. Teachers do not realise that they are tacitly accepting mediocre performance by not addressing it. However if you make an issue of something, it invites students' or even parents' pushback. A situation teachers usually would rather not get into so they can focus on students who are more severely underperforming and have time left over to tackle the sheer the amount of other administrative tasks at hand.

Choose Your Battles

It requires less emotional energy. Teaching is an inherently stressful role that involves constant multitasking. You have to deal with problematic students, parents, colleagues and management. The last thing a teacher needs is to spend his finite energy on a relatively small battle.

I admit it: I am guilty of having tolerated mediocrity. Not much, but probably more than I should have. The year I learnt the importance of not tolerating mediocrity was the year I was teaching a second class (by results ranking). Having focussed much at a one-to-one tutoring and encouraging students with plenty of "Not yet, try again-s", the year 2007 ended on a high with six students in the class being ranked amongst the school's top ten performers for the national exam that year. This included the top two best performers!

However, the school leader (remember "Mrs Discipline with Love" from the previous article?) told me that I had nothing to celebrate since the good performance of a high performing class is a given. She claims that the class' good performance was not a result of my work per se. Clearly she had turned a blind eye to the fact that the top ten usually came from the top most class, but not that year.

I disagreed blatantly. Yes, we expect excellence from a high performing class but I strongly believe that high performance is a norm that needs to be defended vigilantly. The defence, however is a delicate dance of balance. While teachers do not want to constantly "ride" a student and become a nettlesome micromanager, he also should not settle too easily either.

Teaching without high standards is not teaching at all, and standards are built upon by many "Not yet, try again-s".

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