Repair
Teachers make
mistakes.
That’s great! Because then we can repair.
Like Summer did. (Or would have. If you know what I mean.) (And you won’t know what I mean if you haven’t listened to Episode 1 of my new podcast, Teachers’ Lounge with Betsy Burris!)
But let’s back up.
Not everyone is comfortable making mistakes. Especially when they’re public, in front of critical students poised to “go for the jugular” (as a teacher once told me).
So the first thing about mistakes is to let ourselves make them. To even welcome them.
Not just because mistakes are made by regular human beings. And wouldn’t it be nice to just relax into being a regular human being in our classrooms (and everywhere else)?
But also because, by welcoming our own mistakes, we welcome our students’ mistakes. And students who are making mistakes are on a
fast track
to learning.
So mistakes are good news because everyone can learn from them.
But they’re still mistakes. And they can leave sticky emotional traces, like embarrassment or, worse, shame.
And those of us who make mistakes, especially in public, can lie awake at night worrying about what other people think of us and the mistake we made. (Or is that just me?)
Enter repair.
Repair is the thing we do in relationships when we know we’ve done something wrong and want to make it better.
How do we repair?
We admit to our mistake. (Otherwise known as owning our shit.)
We ask about its impact OR make a guess about its impact. (Either way, we collect data about the effects of our mistake so we’re not making any damaging assumptions or overlooking something important.)
We listen. We learn.
We notice any defensiveness that arises and remind ourselves to stay in our gardens. (Because people’s realities are different and different realities don’t need to threaten us.)
We correct ourselves. (“What I should have said or done was….” “What I’ll do in the future is….”)
If appropriate, we make a plan for moving forward in the relationship.
This is not a formula. The steps are suggestions that may or may not be relevant to every repair. Like, saying that Napoleon was in exile on Rikers Island does not require all of these steps. Responding to a charge of racism might.
The important point is that repair quite often
strengthens
relationships. Provides opportunities that having been right in the first place would have precluded. A boon that makes mistakes not shameful slip-ups but portals to learning and self-improvement.
Like Summer did.
Mantra: Let’s make a repair today!