I often ask students to imagine they had to choose between two medical doctors. One doctor passed the medical exams with an average of 60% and the other passed with an average of 95%. Students always answer that they would choose the doctor with the 95% average. The reason? Because the doctor who had a 60% average had not demonstrated an understanding of 40% of the course material.

Why do I ask students this question? Because I want students to understand that when we are confused and don't ask questions, when we "sort of understand", or when we make mistakes and don't correct them, we leave gaps in our understanding. Over time, these gaps become increasingly more difficult to fill. We don't feel like we're competent. And we lose confidence.

What if our goal was to master what we are learning?

Salman Khan, the founder of Khan Academy, has a great TED talk where he explains the importance of learning for mastery. In helping us understand the difference between learning for mastery and how we often approach learning in school, he uses the example of a contractor building a house. A contractor understands that the integrity of a house depends on the integrity of each stage of construction, especially the foundation. You can listen to Khan's excellent 20-minute TED talk here.

In Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers - The Story of Success, his research on highly successful athletes, musicians, entrepreneurs and academics proves that in order to achieve mastery, we need to put in 10,000 hours of practice. You can read a summary of his book here.

There are no shortcuts to mastery.

What do we do in class to make sure we master concepts?

• we nurture a respectful classroom culture that makes it safe to take risks in our learning, honours our individual learning styles, provides time for us to think and encourages questioning.
• we independently solve problems based on learning from the previous day to make sure it has "stuck". These entry cards give us all a clear idea whether we mastered concepts from the previous day.
• we listen respectfully to each other when we discuss ideas as a community to make sure everyone has an opportunity to question and share.
• we use Cornell Notes to be clear about the learning goal of a lesson and to be accountable for summarizing our understanding of new concepts.
• we reflect on what we learn in our Reflection Journal.

Learning for mastery takes time and requires us to shift our mindset from thinking what we understand is "good enough" to proving to ourselves through practice that we are 100% confident in our abilities.