Teachers insist on essential practices.

Why do teachers insist on certain practices, over and over again?  Is it because they can? Is it simply to confine students to a set way to complete task, thereby stifling their own creativity?  Or is it to help students to complete tasks in the best way possible?  I certainly can't speak for all teachers, but what I do know is that good practices go a very long way in achieving success.  

So why do I insist on certain practices?  Simple, hind sight is 20-20 vision.  In other words, if we choose to learn from experiences in the past, we can use the lessons learnt to help us with the future.  Numerous students have taught me well.  Now equipped with the ability to anticipate where errors may occur, I am able to warn students to avoid some of the pitfalls.  Notice I said 'SOME' and not 'ALL' because it is not humanly possible to avoid making mistakes, and of course the saying is true, that one tends to learn better from their own mistakes, so we are prone to making our own mistakes.  However, what is also true is that you can also learn from the mistakes of others.

In fact, CXC writes reports on the performance of students year after year in their exams, highlighting in particular areas of weakness.  What is the purpose of these reports?  Clearly, it is to inform us.  Teachers and students alike can all learn from the previous mistakes of others.  As we prepare students to write exams and students likewise prepare to write their exams we should try to only make new mistakes of our own.

So all that is left for us to do, is to adopt practices that are good and sound as we work cooperatively to be successful at the task at hand.