Every craftsman has a story of their first major mistake. For me, that moment came in my third year of teaching, when I tried to introduce my students to a new piece of educational technology without proper preparation.
It was October 1998. I had just learned about a new interactive whiteboard system that promised to revolutionize how students learned mathematics. Excited by the possibilities, I convinced my principal to purchase one for our classroom.
What I failed to do was test the system thoroughly before bringing it into my lesson. I assumed that because it worked in the demonstration, it would work in my classroom. I was wrong.
On the day I planned to unveil this new tool to my students, the system failed to connect. The projector flickered, the software crashed, and within twenty minutes, I was standing in front of thirty disappointed eighth graders with nothing but a chalkboard and a whiteboard marker.
That day, I turned my mistake into a lesson. I sat down with my students and explained exactly what had gone wrong. I showed them how I had failed to follow my own rule: "test before you teach."
Together, we worked through the material using traditional methods. By the end of the week, I had the system working perfectly. But more importantly, I had taught my students that even teachers make mistakes, and that the most important skill is knowing how to recover.
Barbara Asbell
Twenty years of teaching, one unforgettable slip.