Framing mistakes as a learning opportunity
In a mathematics class mistakes are really tricky. Many students have a very simple view of mistakes; they are bad and should be avoided. Unfortunately being human beings, we all make mistakes, even in a math class. Even me, at the front of the classroom, I will make mistakes. Hopefully we use these mistakes as learning opportunities, which we can only really do if we stop and reflect on what happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. I made a mistake last week during one of my class's online quizzes, I made a very simple mistake in the setup of the question. Whenever this happens I am usually alerted by an industrious student, and fix the mistake. During a previous class I shared a list of questions I had to answer when writing a student recommendation for an internship. One of the questions we discussed was "Does the student ask for help when needed?" In most situations it is preferable for someone to ask questions in order to know what they should do, th