Try Everything

During the April vacation, as a family we saw the Disney movie "Zootopia."  In fact, we loved it so much that we saw it twice!  It was the perfect family movie and in true Disney style, plenty of adult laughs built in to the dialogue.

The story is based around a bunny who wants to become a police officer, instead of going into the family business: carrot farming.  There are plenty of naysayers from her own parents to other animals to one of the other main characters, a sly fox.  Through it all, the bunny is determined to fully realize her dream of becoming a police officer.

At the end, the credits roll to a song by Shakira called "Try Everything."  One of the lines particularly struck me:

Birds don't just fly, they fall down and get up

Nobody learns without getting it wrong

It seems to me that too often we place too high a priority on getting it right and often go to great lengths to avoid getting it wrong.  It happens to us in all areas of our life, personal and professional.  I loved that Disney delivered such a powerful message in their movie.  

The bunny struggled to become a police officer and made plenty of mistakes once she was officially on the force.  But this fictional character truly embraced the fact that learning includes being wrong, even with people close to you.  

Life is messy and learning is messy.  I am proud that in MPS, more often than not, I see adults modeling for our students the fact that we (the adults) often get it wrong and that is just a part of learning and ultimately life.  If we embrace how wrong we are, it humanizes us to our students, and invites them to connect with us more meaningfully while also developing deeper relationships.  

The graphic below depicts the perception and the reality of success

The more that adults can articulate the fact that our path to success looks nothing like the path on the left and just as messy as the path on on the right, we help our students drown out the naysayers in their own lives.  Our students deserve the encouragement from every adult in MPS to try everything, even if it means getting things wrong.  

Author's Note: We welcomed Sadie to our family over the weekend.  We could not stand being without a dog since our Malachy passed away.  Here's a picture from this weekend of her with Our Boys: