This past Saturday I attended our son’s white coat ceremony at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. At WVU, medical students are presented their “white coats” at the end of their first two years of classwork and at the beginning of their two-year rotation schedule. It’s kind of a big deal.
During the ceremony, I had the opportunity to listen to Jeffrey W. Cannon, an anesthesiologist and critical care physician in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. Cannon earned his medical degree from West Virginia University back in 2019, completed his residency at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and received a one-year critical care fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School during 2024.
Dr. Cannon served as the keynote speaker for the white coat ceremony.
Being a retired school administrator, I’ve sat through my share of speeches – graduation and other. But Dr. Cannon’s remarks resonated with me, and I want to share some of his thoughts here today.
Cannon talked about gratefulness, failing versus failure, and creativity, which represented the past, present, and future of his medical career up to this point.
When he spoke about gratefulness, Cannon encouraged the medical students to embrace and enjoy what they were learning along their training path – not just ticking off checkmarks once they completed tasks. He told the students that every week he would try to spend time reflecting on what he was learning during his medical training. Some weeks would provide more learning than others, but the act of reflecting on that learning made a big difference to Cannon during his advancement to being a medical doctor.
Cannon told the students to embrace “failing” but not “failure.” He shared a story about a time when he failed a public medicine course. He was devastated. But, during Christmas break, he devised a course correction whereby he eventually became one of the top public medical students in his class.
Cannon emphasized the importance of learning from “failing” but never identifying as a “failure.” To Cannon, “failing” made him stronger as a student, a doctor, and a person and was part of the formative process of becoming a professional. “Failure,” on the other hand, sends a final message that you aren’t cut out to do the task in front of you.
Now, as a practicing anesthesiologist, Cannon enjoys practicing “creative medicine” every day. Cannon defined “creative medicine” as the process of applying what he learned in medical school, residency, and fellowship, the science of medicine, to patient cases that require a bit of artistic touch. To Cannon, the art of “creating” a diagnosis and a prescription is what makes the difference between a good doctor and a great doctor.
As I left my son’s ceremony on Saturday, I began wondering about how our traditional K-12 school system would be different if our adult learning leaders focused on gratefulness, failing, and creating with our young learners. How would our learning spaces look different? How would our learning spaces be different?
Instead, in our traditional public school system, grades replace gratefulness, “failure” replaces “failing,” and rote memorization takes the place of “creativity.” And what we end up with is a stagnant place filled with bad messages about what it means to be a true learner.
Til tomorrow. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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