"As teachers, allowing students to see failure as a negative experience is one of the worst things we can do.
Granted, this isn’t unique to education. The idea of risk-taking, failing, looking, leaping, try-try-again is ingrained in our cultural DNA. But in education, we certainly have made it dramatic. In fact, we don’t even need the whole word anymore. Failure erodes to fail, which itself erodes to simply F..."
In education we many students are told they have "failed" yet as teachers we know that making mistakes is the norm. Engineers look at failures as a way to learn. What can we do in education?
This post explores:
* What does it mean to "fail"?
* The role of failure in learning
* Helping Students Fail: A Framework which has four sections, each of which provides "the idea" and guiding questions.
Where can you start as a teacher?
* By clarifying the meaning
* By providing context
* By designing transparent processes
* By illuminating progress
Students need to learn that a "failure" is not the end of the road, but a stop on a journey. As teachers this post provides a number of suggestions that may help us better meet the needs of our students and help them see failure in a different light.