Martin Barker, Headmaster, discusses celebrating personal bests and facing setbacks with positivity:
We have a range of assemblies each week at school. Many are age specific, but all the Prep School children and teachers come together for a ‘whole school assembly’ most Thursdays.
With the whole school gathered, we celebrate significant achievements such as scholarships, tournament wins, distinctions in music exams and colours for excellence in music, art, drama, sport, academic or the school community. At the end of each term, in the final assembly, we also give out Headmaster’s Awards and announce all the results of the Inter-Patrol competitions to huge excitement. In short, we celebrate success.
What is not so easy to celebrate, of course, is ‘failure’, which is sometimes taken to be the opposite of success. I think in our context though, the word ‘failure’ is a little harsh, and often belies what can be a personal achievement for someone. The concept of ‘personal best’, most often applied to sport, can give a huge sense of satisfaction: in the wider context it may not be being better than everyone else, but it is still an achievement for that individual. In the school context it is important for us all to make as much of personal bests as we can – if a child has done well relative to previous performance, say in academic work, that is a success. If a sports team have performed really well against strong opposition, but narrowly lost, that can be a success. If a child prepared really well for a scholarship, but narrowly missed out to a very strong field, that too can be considered a success. A few lines in a play for a hitherto very nervous child can be a big ‘win’, likewise a public performance of a relatively basic piece of music. Success is about personal bests, being the best that YOU can be.
Encouraging children to be their best, to put in effort, and to help others to be their best too, helps children to adopt a growth mindset. This is the belief that our brain is like a muscle and by exercising it, by putting in effort, we can become smarter and stronger. A growth mindset also encourages resilience, so that setbacks are seen as chances to learn and grow.
In one of our Thursday assemblies recently, I showed the children a YouTube clip of some very notable and successful people who had all had significant setbacks at one stage or another: Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and JK Rowling, to name but a few.
We then talked about how these people had used these setbacks, or ‘failures’, to drive them to even greater heights. They had learnt from their less than successful experiences to make them even stronger as people and hugely successful in the future.
Thomas Edison has become renowned for having a growth mindset. The story goes that, after working on a nickel-iron battery for five months, an associate commiserated that he didn’t have any results. Edison replied, “Results! Why, man, I have got a lot of results! I know several thousand things that won’t work.”
In the Pre-Prep, our teachers use the concept of growth mindset to encourage the children to be fearless in their learning. We talk in terms of ‘magical mistakes’ and if a magical mistake has been discovered, the child and their classmates all discuss what went wrong and decide what they would do differently next time.
With a growth mindset, children can interpret challenges, setbacks and criticism as a sign that they need to take a closer look, to put in extra effort and stretch themselves more.
So, let’s encourage our children to see failure in a new light, and take the positives out of each experience so that they are stronger for next time. ‘Perseverance’ is key in our ‘Westbourne Way’; these are important life skills, best learnt now!
Remember, stars cannot shine without darkness…
