The Best Mistake
I Ever Made!
Mining our Mishaps
for Meaning
We probably all share the belief that mistakes are great opportunities for learning, and promote
classroom cultures in which students are encouraged to take risks without fear of failure.
However, this conviction only becomes a truth if we consciously reflect on our errors and change
our behaviours as a result. We are not learning if we keep repeating the same mistakes!
As part of this year’s AISA Leadership Conference we are inviting you to work in small teams to
apply your conference learning in ‘Authentic Applications’, through which you will share your
school stories and apply the principles and practices we’ll be learning in the workshops.
Not just any stories though. We’d like you to concentrate on one significant mistake you believe
you have made in leadership or governance, on what you learned from it, and on how your
practice has changed as a result. In our large group sessions at the conference, we’ll work in
trios, listening to each other’s stories and using them to discuss applications of our new
learning. You obviously get to choose what to share and, don’t worry, we’ve all been there!
In order to achieve this goal, we’re asking you to complete the following protocol and bring it to
Cape Town ready to discuss it with your trio. Thanks in advance for engaging with this genuine,
personal learning experience!
Name: Click here to enter text.
School: Click here to enter text.
Years in governance, leadership or management: Click here to enter text.
Here’s the task: Think of an experience in your professional life when you made a significant
professional ‘mistake’ e.g. you tried something and it didn’t work; you misjudged a situation or
a person; you launched a project that simply didn’t come off. Now do this:
Step 1: Setting the Context (Provide a brief description of the basic scenario.)
Click here to enter text.
Step 2: Unpacking the Error (What was supposed to happen? What actually happened?)
Click here to enter text.
Step 3: Examining the Gap (What accounts for the difference between your intentions and the
actual outcome?)
Click here to enter text.
Step 4: Mining for Meaning (Describe as concisely as possible your own learning from this
mistake. Try this approach…)
Through this mistake, I learned:
i.
ii.
iii.
Click here to enter text.
Click here to enter text.
Click here to enter text.
Step 5: Examining the Impact (Describe any significant changes to your approach to
governance/leadership/management. Try this approach…)
Before this mistake, I used to:
Click here to enter text.
Now I:
Click here to enter text.
Step 6: Passing it Forward (In one sentence, distil your mistake into a piece of advice for a
fellow governor/leader/manager.)
Click here to enter text.
Step 7: Applying our Conference Learning (to be completed during our conference sessions)
What principles or practices from this AISA professional learning engagement shed light on this
mistake? What have we learned at AISA that we could apply here?
Click here to enter text.
2016 AISA Leadership Conference ---- Multi-Levelled Leadership: Creating Connected Schools