Student Science – Susan Moran
“Last year, I took an improvisational comedy class in a successful attempt to stretch my comfort zone and to have fun. One of the first things our teacher, Myles Goldin, told us to do whenever anyone made a mistake during an exercise was to throw our hands high in the air and yell, “Wahoo!” Within a couple of minutes of starting our first game — essentially, speed-catch with several invisible balls of different colors — some student failed to catch the virtual blue ball. Suddenly, Goldin was leading us in a round of yelling “Wahoo!” This happened over and over each class. Goldin was reinforcing a central message: Mistakes are not only okay, they’re necessary building blocks of learning and creativity. “We should embrace and celebrate mistakes, because we couldn’t grow and create cool things without them,” she said. Goldin also teaches improv workshops for high school and college instructors in and near Boulder, Colo. Her “How to Fail Brilliantly” workshops instruct teachers on how to infuse their classroom lessons with this trial-and-error spirit.”(more)