Over the weekend I finally saw Moana. My girls saw it in the theaters, and I have heard the soundtrack a million times now it seems but I had not seen the actual movie. Honestly, it was good but pretty typical Disney plot line. Nothing really amazing about it but nothing bad either.

But there was one line that caught my attention and got me thinking; “To protect our people voyaging was forbidden, and we have forgotten who we are.” – Grandma Tala

I was thinking about this in the world of education, and not in an obvious way. We all know of teachers that have forgotten that they got into education because they loved students and loved teaching. There are teachers that forgot who they are as an educator, and it is the job of the leader to help them remember who they were when they loved teaching.

The first part of the line struck a chord with me. Many times as educators, we forbid students to do something under the guise of protecting them. In all reality, we are trying to protect ourselves from the fear of failure. It has been proven since the dawn of time that as humans, we learn most effectively in situations where failure is almost guaranteed. It is a rare situation in which we learn a life lesson through success.

We need to voyage where we haven’t been in order to learn something we do not know.

I guess it might be a little simplistic, but I think it holds true.