District Administrator's Corner

by Loren Glasbrenner River Valley School District Administrator We are in the business of developing brains here at the River Valley School District. But, what has been recently fascinating to researchers is the rate of gain a school-age brain can make when they embrace and recognize the growth. These moments of synaptic plasticity happen with celebrations... and mistakes. Our brains make good use of both, but what we need to learn to embrace are the mistakes. Making mistakes can be productive. Mistakes, errors, or the number wrong can become crippling to students when we pressure students to find the immediate answer. As adults, we have memories of the teacher’s red pen and having work returned to us as we sat at our desks. This tension of having everything right the first time can add incredible pressure and create a learning barrier, which will unintentionally block the student’s growth. But, there is always hope. We need to embrace the process, recognize the change needed, and make the correction. Recent research at Caltech discovered that error neurons are incredibly effective and can create greater growth (www.caltech.edu/about/news/learning-mistakes-84558). Teachers have always planned to make schoolwork a little more challenging than what the students know, but yet not impossible. This theory in education is labeled the “Zone of Proximal Development” and was originally written about by Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist (www.simplypsychology.org). The zone is the space between what we currently know and what we can accomplish with coaching or embracing the struggle to get to an attainable goal. Again, keeping the goal attainable and the learner involved in the process makes all the difference.  Consider the following setbacks that grew from their “mistakes”: • Disneyland’s opening day.  • Michael Jordan’s high school basketball career. • Bill Gates’ first company. • Oprah Winfrey’s newscasting career. • J.K. Rowling’s rough drafts of Harry Potter.  • Lady Gaga’s first albums. So, make the mistake, write the rough draft, learn from the process, and recognize the next steps. Worry about the chances you might miss when you don’t even try. Your brain will thank you by growing.