In our first Friday literacy class that met prior to the
start of the elementary school year we made t charts and engaged in rich
discussions about things the preservice teachers were excited about and things
they were concerned about their internship. One of the things that many of them
were worried about was “lessons that bomb.”
When pressed, those same students admitted that there were
posters all around their schools sharing the sentiment “mistakes are where the
learning happens” or some variation on that theme. So don’t lessons that bomb fit in the
“mistakes are where learning happens” category? Shouldn’t we be excited about
opportunities to learn? Let’s move that into the other column…
Things We Are
Excited About Things
We Are Nervous About
They were skeptical, to say the least…
One of the students asked the group who had seen the video
about the Spanx lady.
Quiet pause.
Hmmmm…not sure I want to see a Spanx failure.
Someone asked if that was the one where Sara Blakely talks
about how her father asked the children in her family what they failed at every
day.
You can watch the (minute and a half) video here…
Carlos Barrabes, an entrepreneur, is credited with the
following:
“If you don’t fail its because you
did not risk enough, and if you didn’t risk enough its because you didn’t put
your whole self out there.”
Sara
and Carlos are focusing on taking risks. And teaching is certainly all about
taking risks.
So let’s reframe failure. Failure is not lack of success; it
is lack of attempt. When you do everything you thought to do, everything you
could do in the moment it is a successful attempt regardless of the outcome.
From this perspective we might have to change the name of
our Friday session…too bad we don’t meet on Tuesdays – Celebrate I Tried
Tuesday has a nice ring to it.
Still learning… to
teach, Dr.G
My intern texted me yesterday afternoon about this! I love reading it from your perspective now. What a wonderful way to frame our work.
ReplyDeleteAs a class we've been watching some videos from Jo Boaler, out at Standford, from her Week of Inspirational Math. The videos are made for kids and are about 2 1/2 to 3 minutes each. The first was about how our brains change and grow. Then one about how making mistakes helps our brains grow. The language in our classroom this week as a result of these videos has been like nothing I've seen with kids. It's amazing.
This post is actually a couple weeks late - I am working on continuing the story of this strategy. Lots of thinking (and writing) to do about it.
ReplyDelete