Teachable moments

[sev]

Been participating in a comment thread over on shakesville and the comments thread was closed while I was in the process of writing. Since my every word is precious (ahem!) I figured I'd put it here instead. This may turn out to make absolutely no sense out of context; sorry about that.

my snarkiness aside, regarding teachable moments:

It's my experience that when somebody puts their foot in it, it's mostly a teachable moment for the spectators. Many of whom we've seen here in the last two days: multiple commenters have spoken here for the first time & stuck around to learn things in public.

Personally, my own process tends to look like:

• I screw up publicly
  
• I get called on it
  
• I get defensive
  
• I retreat (or flounce off, if I've gotten *really* defensive)
  
• I shut up and listen
  
• I watch somebody else screw up in the same way
  
• I watch yet somebody else screw up in much a similar way
  
• eventually when somebody is in the process of screwing up like that, I can see it coming...
  
• ...and then finally I can claim to have learned something from my initial screw-up.

At best, I can say that after 17 years of talking about social justice, I'm better about being quiet when I'm feeling defensive. As it turns out, there's a lot of dignity available, there.

Comments

[firecat]

Well said.