Through either being ridiculed themselves or seeing others in that situation, people above elementary school age become adverse to risking being wrong or making a mistake. Avoiding failure is not reducing risk. A different risk emerges. The new risk is one that avoids anything new and then the person misses out on a new experience, or merely an experience. In his book Visible Learning for Teachers, John Hattie contends that one quality of creating an environment for learning is to make mistakes expected (Hattie 26). This concept is similar to the Trojanball concept of encouraging kids to foul out of basketball games. If one fouls out, they have been playing harder for longer than other players. Usually, players are reprimanded for fouling out or for getting too many fouls. We wanted maximum effort from our players every second they were on the court and it started with everything we did in practice. Every drill, every day either the coaches or the other players themselves pushed their teammates to play hard either through their example or verbally. The difference in the classroom is the lack of actual cheering for others, and that students who are on the team are there because they choose to be.
Seth Godin believes that one should work with the term “flux” rather than risk since flux means movement. Everything we do involves movement, either forward or backward. Not trying something new is actually moving backward since the gap between where a person is at the start compared to the others widens when one chooses not to undertake an activity that others are doing.Godin, Seth. Poke the Box: When was the last time you did something for the first time?. Do You Zoom?, 2011.
Hattie, John. Visible Learning For Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning. Routledge, 2012.
