Failure

One way we can help students prepare for an unknown future is to teach them how to make mistakes, fail and grow from these experiences.  

In the film, Most Likely to Succeed (2015), speakers claim that allowing students to fail and teaching them how to learn from their failures is more valuable than encouraging students to continuously thrive, succeed and get straight As.  Robert Gates, Former US Secretary of Defense, shares, "One of the key experiences in almost everybody's life is failure.  And it's something that I think, particularly a lot of high achieving young people toady, are not prepared for."  Lazzo Block, SVP of People Operations Google Inc., builds on this idea, "Dealing with failure and learning from it is actually one of the most important skills you can have."  In the film, both of these successful leaders argue that teaching students that failure is part of learning is critical to their future success.

For the 3 min 42 sec video clip "Failure and a Growth Mindset" from Most Likely to Succeed go to Failure and a Growth Mindset.

In the TED Talk, "Failure Is An Option" (July 29, 2016), guest speaker, Astro Teller, employee of X (run by Google), references JFK's dream to send a man to the moon.  Astro Teller calls his work a "moon shot factory" where employees are encouraged to dream big and then come up with plans to reach their dreams.  Employees are encouraged to spend time "breaking things and trying to prove that we're wrong", celebrating failure and then creating an even better big dream to explore.   According to the TED Talk, Google is also using this strategy of "chasing failure" to learn from mistakes and improve products.

For more, check out the full TED talk at Failure Is An Option.

If failure is a critical part of success, how are we preparing our students to embrace mistakes and failure?

In our recent Core Knowledge Language Arts (Amplify Education, Inc. 2015) unit, Eureka! Student Inventor students were required to fail.  In fact, earning a "failure wedge" was the only way to move on to round two of the unit.  Students were asked to identify the failures of famous inventors and acknowledge their own failures with their inventions and with peer collaboration.  Luckily, my students were eager and ready to complete this challenge because they know that failure and mistakes are an important part of learning.

During our first week of 4th grade this year, we explored lessons from the "Weeks of Inspirational Math" from Youcubed at Stanford University (2016).  As part of this exploration, we watched  "Mistakes are Powerful".  Check out the short clip at Mistakes are Powerful.  Since we watched this video, my students have adopted the phrase, "Good thing mistakes help my brain grow".  They use this phrase with themselves, with their peers and with me when I make a mistake or fail.  This simple curriculum and related classroom discussions helped set the tone for valuing mistakes and failure throughout our year.  Often our daily learning objectives include, "I can learn from my mistakes in ...".  My students now smile and nod when I say, "I hope you make mistakes today," or, "I hope you fail on your first attempt," because they believe this is how their brain grows.

References

Amplify Education, Inc. (2015). Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts®. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://ckla.amplify.com/site/home National Edition, Grade 4, Unit 5

Dintersmith, T., Leibowitz, A., & Whiteley, G. (2015). Most Likely To Succeed. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.mltsfilm.org/

TED Radio Hour. (2016, July 29). Failure Is An Option. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/487606750/failure-is-an-option

Youcubed at Stanford University. (2016). Inspiring Students to Math Success and a Growth Mindset. Retrieved March 12, 2017, from https://www.youcubed.org/#Weeks of Inspirational Math