Playing to Win

This post was published as the "Superintendent's Corner" column for the Fall 2018 edition of the Shrewsbury School Journal.

The Red Sox are World Series champs, again!  It was very satisfying to witness the defeat of the Yankees, Astros, and Dodgers by a Sox team that maintained their poise and played with confidence, especially after each single loss to those opponents (especially the 18-inning marathon against LA!).  In this age of sophisticated statistics, Red Sox manager, Alex Cora, and his coaches used various analytics to make decisions that put players and the team in a better position to succeed.  However, it was clear that some choices regarding whom to put in the batting lineup and when to bring in certain pitchers were also made based on the manager’s intuition regarding what he felt was psychologically needed at the time, in order to create a climate that signaled that the Sox were playing to win.

Every sports fan knows that there is a distinctive difference between “playing to win” and “playing not to lose,” especially when the pressure is high.  When watching a game, you can sense the level of confidence displayed by teams and athletes as the game ebbs and flows.  Success is usually achieved by those who play with conviction as they strive for victory, and it eludes those who play tentatively in an effort not to make mistakes.  Successful coaches motivate their players by empowering them in ways that signal trust in their abilities, while coaches whose teams fail often create an atmosphere where players are mainly worried about messing up.  After all, it’s hard to hit a home run if you are afraid of striking out!  

These concepts also apply to how we educate our students.  If they receive signals from educators and parents – either intentionally or unintentionally – that the most important thing is not to make mistakes, anxiety and fear of looking bad or falling short is the result, and that is not conducive to learning.  On the other hand, when educators and parents emphasize learning as growth and view mistakes as a natural part of improvement, students are more likely to feel empowered and motivated to achieve goals – and they’re more likely to be resilient when the inevitable mistakes happen.  

Similarly, if educators receive signals, either intentionally or unintentionally, that what matters most for our students’ success is making the fewest mistakes on standardized tests and other traditional measures of learning, this can lead to overemphasizing a narrow range of skills and knowledge.  Focusing too much on what is convenient to measure creates the danger of having “our kids study what’s easy to test, not what’s important to learn,” as education advocate and venture capitalist Ted Dintersmith suggests.  We don’t want to create an atmosphere where teachers are intent on minimizing student errors, which is the schoolhouse equivalent of “playing not to lose,” as it stifles innovation.  Instead, we want our educators to engage our students in ways that ignite their curiosity and motivate them to apply skills and knowledge in order to develop the essential capacities of critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration.

We have successful schools, and it would be easy to play it safe, keep doing what we’ve been doing, and try not to make mistakes.  I think our children deserve better than that.  Our bold vision for every Shrewsbury graduate requires us to empower our educators, students, and families to play to win – where winning means, to paraphrase Thoreau, that our students will have the confidence to pursue their dreams, the motivation to work toward the life they imagine, and, in doing so, achieve the success known by those who strive to become their best selves.