Brush It Off – Making & Learning from Mistakes

Making music is so much about trial and error:  making mistakes that inform how you try again the next time.  Shoot, any good learning is going to involve doing it the wrong way, figuring out what to change, trying again, and hopefully getting it better and better each time.  You have to make mistakes, identify problems, and start over.  But most of all, you have to make mistakes and be okay with it.

My students are NOT okay with doing something wrong.  Kids don’t want to do it the wrong way or be seen with the wrong answer.  This is especially an issue with music making because it is such a communal thing, they want to get it right for themselves and they want to get it right because they don’t want their peers to think that they’ve failed or made errors.  I find this to be a bigger problem especially with my 4th and 5th graders.  They are starting to have an ego and they don’t want their ego to be bruised.

The real trick is setting up a class where students can feel okay to make mistakes.  And how do you teach them to identify mistakes, learn from them, and try again.  Ugh!  It’s hard!  I’ve found a couple little tricks from friends that have really helped to make my students more comfortable with errors and mishaps and little ways that teach them to move on and let their mistakes inform their future behavior.

Teach that it’s Good to Make Mistakes

First, set up a safe space for learning.  Let students know that it’s okay to make a mistake.  Tell them:  sit down and talk about what a mistakes is and why it’s good to have them and learn from them.  Show them:  when a student makes an error and then corrects behavior praise them for realizing they were wrong and changing how they did it.  Model for them:  make mistakes yourself, make a big deal with students to show them that EVEN YOU did it wrong, and then show them how to correct their behavior.  When they see you doing it they realize that it really is okay.  Sometimes they’ll even catch you making the mistake and identify it for you.  Be okay with that… It’s not easy, but it helps them to feel more safe making mistakes.

That’s the process, here are the tricks!

Tell Kids to “Brush it Off”

As soon as we talk about “brushing it off” we go and read rhythms.  What a perfect way to practice the behavior.  We read normal and then harder rhythms so that when kids make an error they get the chance to show that they’re going to “brush it off” and try again.  This is especially fun when you do stuff with rests because if a kid makes a mistake then you’ll be sure to hear it.  I make a big deal about making an error when I read it so that they can see that I’m going to brush off and try again.  I think it’s really important to show kids that even the teacher can make the mistake.  They feel more confident knowing that I make mistakes sometimes.  It’s totally okay if they do it.  They love the action of brushing off, they practice how to do it and the use it always, and it helps them identify the process and feel safe making the mistake and going on.

The clincher from the story is that after I show the video I reveal to them that this little girl was a stand-in.  The kid who was supposed to have that line didn’t show up on the night of the concert and this girl put on the costume and said his lines even though she’d never said that part before or even worn the costume.  When I tell kids this they get really impressed and have a very different impression about her performance.  She’d never said the lines, worn the costume, or been in front of people before.  She didn’t get a chance to practice it, so it makes sense that the hat would fall off.  She’d not tried it before.  Then I ask, “Since she was doing this for the first time, do you think that she made her moment matter?  Did she try her hardest and do a great job?”  They are then super proud of how she did.  Her mistake makes sense because she’d not even tried the costume on before.  She went through the process and did good work.