Giving good feedback is so important for this. If we're only concerned with the score people receive or our assessment of their learning, we're not giving them an opportunity to learn from their incorrect responses. It must be about the learning.

I ALWAYS struggled with this. My mom referred to it as "playing the game". I hated it. I was a GATE kid and so, most times, things came easier to me than some of my other students. I'd finish things early and then get bored in class, which led to talking with people who weren't done yet or "disrupting" the class. I got so many progress reports saying that I was "gifted but seemed disinterested in the subject matter." To me, if I was done with classwork, why would I need to just sit there bored out of my mind? Why not give me more or something to challenge me? It was a constant struggle, which manifested into some bigger issues in high school. I've been able to communicate these kinds of stories to my kids in my internship and some have used me as an example for their own lives.

This reminded me of what we're learning in our Pedagogy class. While the long-term target is always important to remind students about, it is the day-to-day short-term learning targets which fill in that structure that help us to get to the long-term targets. You run a marathon by taking one step at a time and that eventually gets you to the 26.2 (!) miles. If we only think about how far we have to go, it will be too daunting to get there.