Pedagogy and Academics

The false starts behind every success

I found myself in conversation with a parent recently, the kind that lingers a little longer than planned. He was describing his daughter - bright, curious, willing to try anything. 

Piano one term, guitar the next. “She loves starting,” he said, half-smiling, “but if she’s not good straight away, she’s out.”

It stayed with me. Not because it’s unusual, but because it’s so familiar. 

Many of our girls carry the weight of expectation that they should be good at something from the outset. When that doesn’t happen, they step back. Not because they don’t care, but because they care deeply. Being seen to struggle can feel uncomfortable. Sometimes, it feels like failure.

This reflex toward perfection, and a reluctance to sit in the messy middle needs our attention now more than ever. 

Our girls are growing up in a world built on instant highlights and real‑time comparison; and when everything can sit neatly in a filtered snapshot, it's easy for excellence to look immediate and effortless. 

We didn’t experience this in quite the same way. But they do. And so, it becomes our responsibility not to dismiss it, but to recognise it, name it, and interrupt it. The truth is that growth is rarely elegant. It asks for patience, discomfort, and a willingness to be temporarily unremarkable.

Our role is to remind our girls that not being instantly good at something is not a verdict. It is an invitation. We need to say it out loud, and often. To name the false starts that sat behind anything we now do well, and to remember (both for them and for ourselves) that behind every polished story, there was a stack of blurry Polaroids that never made the photo album.

A warm thank you to the dad whose story inspired this. 

Mel Pedavoli

Assistant Principal: Pedagogy and Academic Leadership