I just read Ronald A. Smith's great essay, "Competence Is What You Do When You Make a Mistake" (.pdf file from BYU's Focus on Faculty newsletter). I love that definition.

In this piece, Smith explains how teachers often equate "competency" with appearing masterful and therefore error-free -- which is not only impossible, but misleading. We get so hung up on avoiding the appearance of "incompetence" that we hide our errors and miss out on opportunities to model problem-solving in the name of generating an aura of mastery. But students should be made to feel like they can make mistakes too, if they hope to learn from them. Often the "perfect" teacher is the one they fear revealing weaknesses to the most. We need, as Smith concludes, to "demonstrate how errors can become opportunities for learning."

What Smith doesn't mention is the level of confidence it takes to admit mistakes in front of an audience. As a teacher, you have to be quick on your feet when you make a mistake -- and not let the embarrassment humiliate you or to listen to your inner voice when it whisper "you've been outed as a charlatan and a fraud!" The longer you teach, the more mistakes you'll inevitably make -- and the more confident you'll become when you respond to them. If you lack confidence, you react to errors to cover up your own ego-bruise rather than responding in a constructive manner that seizes the opportunity for enhancing student learning.

Smith's essay focuses on how he used to solve math problems from the book at home, then display his mastery to the class, never risking an erroneous solution on the board by doing it "live." But the mistakes he'd make "live" were likely to be the same ones the students would make when they did their homework, so he realized it would be better for them to share the error and collaboratively discuss how to solve problem. I like this. I'm also reminded of the day-to-day sorts of mistakes that I've made as a teacher, and how I treat them differently now that I've got a little more experience and confidence than I used to. Here are a few of the mistakes I've made, and how I've dealt with them, both poorly ("reactive") and positively ("constructive")...

Mistake: A student raises her hand to announce that there's a typo on a handout.

Knee-Jerk Reaction: Saying "I did that on purpose just to see if you guys were paying attention."

Constructive Response: Reward the student who discovered the typo. Ask the whole class to correct the error on the handout by hand. Then have them look for more typos, turning the moment into an editing exercise.

Mistake: Calling a student by the wrong name.

Knee-Jerk Reaction: "Jimmy, Jamie, whatever...you know I meant you."

Constructive Response: "I'm sorry, Jimmy. I'm great with faces but bad with names. I'm working on this, so be sure to correct me if I get it wrong again. In the mean time, let me make sure I have your name correctly written in my grade book." (Later, calling on the student again in the class to use repetition as a way of helping memorization.)

Mistake: Breaking class up into the wrong number of small groups (i.e., five discussion questions, one for each group, but -- oops! -- I split them into six groups!)

Knee-Jerk Reaction: Awkwardly splitting up Group Six to join all the other groups, one by one.

Constructive Response: "Group Six: why don't you guys come up with a question for the rest of the class that isn't on this list of discussion questions?"

Mistake: Misspelling a word on the board and being called on it.

Knee-Jerk Reaction: Ignoring it even when a student points it out. "Whatever...you know what I mean."

Constructive Response: Using the board interactively and playing the role of the poor speller. Erase the word and ask the students to spell it letter by letter as I rewrite the word. Repeat the performance for other difficult keywords in a sort of spelling game, transcribing what the students say.

Mistake: Forgetting to bring the instruction sheet or guidelines for an important homework assignment to class.

Knee-Jerk Reaction: "Just wing it...surprise me." Or, "I'll give them to you next time" (even though that gives them less time to work on it).

Constructive Response: Collaborate with the class to come up with the guidelines together, transcribing them on the board.

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