Personal Reflection On Mistakes And Learning

Justin and I have talked extensively concerning his academic performance. One observation I have made in working with him is sometimes when he doesn’t understand something he simply stops. Instead of skipping a problem he doesn’t understand, then come back to it later, his choice is to simply stop working on the paper. One of my goals for him this year is to have the courage to try completing an assignment and not be afraid to be wrong. Sometimes when he comes to me for help, he hasn’t even read the related passage so attempting to answer the question is an impossibility. As a parent myself, I taught my own children one of the best ways of learning is feeling the accomplishment of working through your mistakes and learning by them. Justin

As a mom, I was getting the feeling he didn’t really want to do his homework and then when it became difficult that made things worse. I tried to explain to him that he couldn’t just give up when he didn’t know an answer. Moreover, I wanted him to answer all the questions he knew and then try the ones he didn’t, and come to me for support in the mornings before class or even stay after class if he didn’t want his friends to think he had questions. We brainstormed together to reach a meaningful goal for improving his performance level. We decided if he could get a “B” or better on five assignments he had completed by himself, we thought maybe you would be willing to reward him with a game card. Our conversation included the fact that this might take a little time because he has to learn to come and ask questions before he turns the work in.

I’m not sure if he is afraid of failure or doesn’t want to try for whatever reason. With this being said, I hope you don’t mind that I made this proposal to him. I would like to see if this approach would motive Justin to try things on his own. At this point in our conversation, I reinforced to him how important it is for him to practice on his own with quizlet.com and the memory games I’ve shown him. Sharing with him that I, too, had to study very hard to be a good student seemed to put a little relief in his