Forgive Yourself, and Forgive Each Other

As Jenny’s dad said in Muppets Take Manhattan, “Peoples is peoples. Rats is peoples. Frogs is peoples. Dogs is peoples. Peoples is peoples.” He was looking around his restaurant at his motley crew of Muppets questing for their dreams in New York and reminding everyone that we have more that makes us the same than different. 

In the same way, all of us who find ourselves in educational spaces are peoples. Some of us are children and some of us are grown, but we’re still all peoples. And we all make mistakes.

So, as educators, we need to prepare and adjust for mistakes. We know that our audience is comprised of students, and many of us have upwards of thirty other people in the room with us. For those of us in other roles, like administration, we have the students as well as the staff and teachers. When we predict mistakes, we cease to be surprised by them, and when we make them a necessary part of the learning process, we invite students and ourselves to stumble up our individual mountains together. This process ties back with the last learning norm - learning is messy, and most of that is because people are messy. 

But, forgiveness is learned. It does not come naturally. So, the only way to make sure your learning environment forgives its participants is to begin with yourself. If you are not willing to be open and transparent with your educational practices, philosophies, planning, and grading then no one else in your space will be open either. Learners learn from their leaders, so we have to model and be comfortable with practices before we can ask them to do it themselves. When I have a typo on my slides, as I did today (apparently ordeal has an “A” in it…), I laugh at myself and make a joke of it. I choose to forgive myself. When there’s a schedule conflict because of a snow day make-up meeting, you ask for forgiveness and reschedule again. There are so many voices in the word looking to bring you down: don’t add your voice to their chorus. 

However, forgiveness of the occasional gaffe is not enough. Forgiveness has to be baked into the practices as well. Forgiveness must be constant. Evaluation needs to be forgiving as well. When evaluating learners in process, there has to be room for growth, and if we are averaging the beginning of the year with the end of the year, it punishes instead of forgives, and the one who is being evaluated gets that message. There are many instances of people giving up because they weren’t good at something instantaneously. That’s a learned behavior through years of punishing evaluations. Rather, when we practice forgiveness in evaluation, we can show how we are forgiving our peoples for being peoples, and allow them to grow into better peoples. Don’t average: assess. Sit beside them in the current context. Show them their mistakes, and show them yours. Guide them through to better understandings. Be their educational sherpa: guide them up the mountain. Hold your own pack, and pick each other up when you make mistakes. And next time when we see the same type of rock in the path, learn from the mistake and don’t punish yourself for making it before. Let’s always be here for each other and forgive each other and ourselves.