ICT Learning & Teaching Leader
St. Mark’s Primary School, VIC 

“Be wise enough not to be reckless, but brave enough to take great risks.” - Frank Warren

I’m sure that most teachers and leaders would agree that one of the most powerful gifts that we can give our students is to foster and develop the positive connotations around failure, effort, persistence and having a growth mindset.

I’m sure that they would also agree that if students are not making mistakes and learning from them, they’re not developing as they should be.

I would argue that if you are not making mistakes as a teacher and learning from them, you are not developing as you should be either. I would also argue that if you are not willing to take risks as a leader of a school community, the likelihood of the school maintaining relevance in a modern world remains very slim.

Modern students are encouraged to take risks in their learning. As teachers and leaders, we should be encouraging ourselves to do the same. If we are not failing and learning from these failures, we really need to be asking ourselves if we are daring to be audacious at all.

If we are serious about providing the best possible education for our students, we need to face the reality that the traditional schooling that we have inherited is inadequate. If we want to change the way our classrooms and schools operate, then we must put the expectation upon ourselves to dare to do things differently, better and more deliberately. Progressive change in our schools goes against the traditional notion of schooling where educators teach masses of content in an orderly and easily digestible way that is ultimately measured on a report card or a test score. We can avoid the ‘same old, same old’ if we decide it is time for us to embrace change and approach our professional practice with a willingness to innovate, try new technologies and pedagogies, and constantly reflect upon and improve students’ classroom experiences.

Organisations and schools are facing times of dramatic change, reflective of the world around us. Therefore, the school community and individual teachers need to be comfortable with the constant questioning of and reflecting on current practices. As creatures of comfort, we tend to find the familiarity of daily practice comforting and predictable. A new process, idea or organisational change becomes a very threat to that because it is in opposition to what we know and expect.

The human brain is hardwired to keep us safe, the consequence of which is to be habitually averse to change. We tend to stick to tried and tested units of work rather than embrace new methods. We wouldn’t want to look silly in front of our students if that new gadget or gizmo didn’t behave on the day, and we certainly wouldn’t want to deal with the mess or chaos that might ensue if we gave a bit more freedom and autonomy to students in the classroom.

The reality of change is that it is both hard and uncomfortable. Another simple truth is that you are likely to get resistance when you try something new.

We plead with our students to take risks in their academic work, yet many adults in our system seem to stay frozen in time, rarely changing their classroom structure, embracing a new technology, reimagining a lesson plan, or redesigning school systems and processes. Even when we have the best intentions, sometimes we fall back on what is easy, known or comfortable for us. Change is hard, it has to be, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth doing at all. But change is also an opportunity. If we embrace this mindset, we are more likely to see better results.

In every single school day, we have the freedom to make choices, but we make up things to be afraid of. We struggle with the tension of change initiatives when there is the possibility that they might just work, but we also realise that they might not work. We invent threats, we seek out things that could go wrong, all so we can avoid the fear of failure. In the end, we push ourselves away from the opportunities right in front of us.

An open mindset to learning should be visible and accepted by all stakeholders of a school community. We have to let go of our ego, and embrace a learner attitude rather than an expert attitude. Otherwise, leaders won’t want to show weakness in front of their teachers, and teachers won’t want to show weakness in front of students and parents.

What would our young people gain from us, if we did a better job at showing that we are all learners?

If students are to take risks, then their teachers must create an environment to take risks. It’s up to the leaders to grow a culture to take those risks.