Mistakes, Sailing & 7 News

“You just have to get home.” I said that, or something like that, to the news this week. A reporter and camera crew came out on the boats to report on the resilience program we run at school. So they should, our sailing themed resilience, independence and leadership program is incredible. It’s the best thing I’ve done in education I think.


Having to distil my thoughts about the program: the students, the reflection framework and process, the relevance to the rest of school life, the sailing, is a valuable process to go through. I knew I’d need to articulate the quality of the program for the news guys, I talked about mistakes and having to get home.


One of the things about life as a teenager is that it’s possible to stop trying. At school if work gets hard or a mistake is made in class, students can choose to stop. If teenagers have an argument with a peer they can choose to ignore it and talk to everyone but the other person about it. If a sporting contest starts to go against a player they can ease off and stop chasing.


The brilliance of sailing as a vehicle for a resilience and independence program is that when the students make mistakes on the water, the imperative to try again is very high. When their boat is on its side floating 200m off the Balmain point because they made a mistake, the students have to get it back up and try again. The elements and the activity don’t really let anyone give up mid session. It’s certainly possible to check out mid week and never come back to sailing, but for those who do they’ll be given the chance to build a powerful relationship with failure and trying again.


It’s true of many situations in life, you just have to try again and get back home.