“Is it okay to make mistakes?” she asked.
“No!” (she answered her own question.)
“But seriously, in performance, is it okay to make mistakes?” The students started nodding.
“NO!”
“All right, don’t make mistakes, but if you have to it’s okay, right?”
“NO!!!”
She went on, “It’s okay to make mistakes.” (while shaking her head) “You don’t have to sing it perfectly.” (while nodding.)
It’s classic cognitive dissonance. You want to let yourself be free to make mistakes, but also to hold your own feet to the fire, aiming always for perfection.
I think educators tend to skew heavily to one side or the other of this cognitive dissonance – we offer a safety net for students to make unlimited mistakes, or we routinely demand perfection. The truth is, we need to do both at once, if we want our students to soar.
(Thanks to the amazing Christine Guter for this reminder of how to offer both safety and expect excellence at the same time.)