May the Failure be with You

I like Star Wars.  I like it a lot. There are so many great lessons and quotes from the films. Yoda has to be one of the most quoted educational scholars ever.  That includes even in the newest episode “The Last Jedi” He has a great line about failure

There is great power in learning from failure and I think many educators are embracing this. At times, though, I feel like rather than learning from failure, we’re failing and just redoing. I’m forgetting to make the learning from failure intentional. Am I placing as much importance on the learning as I am the grade recovery? Am I failing my learners in the process?

When I think about the teachers in Star Wars films, they are not so good at providing safe environments for learners to fail.

Ben Kenobi who allows his student Anakin to burn in lava and leaves him for dead

Yoda who lets Luke go off and have his hand cut off by Darth Vader

Luke who is driven to the point where he almost murders Ben Solo while he sleeps.  

These are not safe environments for learners to fail in.  

How can we find that balance between making failure impactful as a learning experience but not result in permanent physical or emotional damage? I am still really struggling with this. But, I think AJ Juliani and John Spencer are great resources for this. Especially AJ’s fail board.

Failure doesn’t mean forgetting. We can’t do what Kylo Ren proposes.

So, before I can can begin look forward to making a safe environment for failing, I need to look at some of my failures.  As a teacher, I have to be willing to model this. I had a lot of successes to build on this year.  But, I still need to recognize my failures.

Here are some of my failures.

I love helping learners when they ask questions.  But, I’m terrible at asking them questions.

My favorite part of my job is helping students with their questions and guiding them in the right direction. But when I’m not being asked questions and I’m floating around, I am terrible at asking questions that force students to explain their process to me.  Too often, I’ll ask those traditional one word response questions:

• “How’s it going?”
• “Do you need any help?”
• “Do you have any questions?”

I need to do a better job at making this floating time more meaningful.  I need to feel ok interrupting their learning to ask questions about their process. I think I need to move from being a person waiting to give answers to an audience for their work.  Asking them to “show me” rather than being the source of answers.

I’m not hitting all the practice standards I want to.

We have begun the journey of adopting Next Generation Science Standards into our curriculum. This year I’ve focused on incorporating the 8 science practices into my classroom. What I’ve discovered, though, is that there is a great imbalance in assessing the practices in my classroom. This is will require me to start with the standards not the activities as I move forward in the design process.

Pushing learners with tighter timelines.

There is rarely a year where I feel like I wasn’t able to cover everything I wanted to.  This year, though, I feel that is more the case than usual.  As I was increasing choice in assessment options for learners, I wasn’t sure about the timing.  Too often, I erred on the side of caution by giving too much time rather than tightening up.  In 2018, I hope to shorten timelines and put it onto the learners to draft plans to apply for extensions. I understand that not all work at the same pace, but I want that recognition to be a part of the process of planning and completing tasks.

I still haven’t figured out that goal setting piece.

It seems like every time I plan on being intentional about students setting and tracking goals, it’s the first thing to fall by the side. I really need to reevaluate the why of this and start small if I want it to be something that I can make grow.