Written by We tell our students that we learn through failure. We tell ourselves it is ok to fail. But deep down have most people felt safe and secure in failing at work? I haven’t!
The message around failing as a teacher has been confusing. No one is to blame for this. There are many stakeholders who we answer to and ultimately, failing means that we inevitably upset one or more of these stakeholders. This has always held me back. I have often hesitated when doing something too different or which I wasn’t sure would work. Sometimes that hesitation resulted in not following through, or not going all in. This year, that has changed, and I think it has changed for many of us.
The pandemic has significantly changed how I teach. I have students in class, at home on alternate days and some at home permanently. Physical distancing also changes how my class operates. Although this has brought about its challenges and stresses it has also brought numerous opportunities. The opportunity I am most excited about is the ability to openly fail without judgement.
The need to radically change how I teach necessitates the need to try new things in my classroom. Whether it be new technology, new methods or new resources, I have found myself making bigger and bolder changes. Some because I need to and some because I want to. In doing so, I also find myself failing more. The biggest change in all of this is that everyone seems to be ok with that.
That is not to say that there have not been successes. There have been many, and a lot of them I attribute to this new sense of being able to fail openly and honestly. The pandemic has brought many stresses and negative changes to my life; however, it has also provided new opportunities and those are the aspects that I am trying to focus on during the constant negative news cycle of the Fall of 2020. My hope is that moving forward, these positive changes to our lives remain well after this pandemic has passed.
So glad you joined Cohort 21! Looking forward to your posts.
Brian, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts. I love that you are embracing this year as an opportunity to “fail without judgement.” I’m looking forward to hearing more about your successes AND failures at our upcoming F2F!
Esther
Great post Brian, and one that resonates for sure. I really appreciate how you highlight the stakeholders involved in our failure, and how this influences a teacher’s perspective on failure. I hadn’t thought about it that way before and it occurs to me that this is most certainly why it is a place of discomfort for me. I have been practicing ‘failing well’ for a couple of years now since taking on the instruction of our MYP Design course where much of the tech required is unfamiliar to me. So I am failing on the regular, often right in front of my students. Sometimes I am grateful for the way it helps their development of empathy, and sometimes I feel that I have ‘failure fatigue’! One thing is certain, it only helps to increase learning. The idea of failing well is written about in many circles, I have found reading about this in the context of design to be especially helpful – for interest, ‘Creative Confidence’ by David & Tom Kelley was an excellent read on this subject.
Looking forward to catching up on Saturday! If you have a few minutes from now until then we would love to know how things have been going in your classroom. See the above prompt for details. If you want to save time feel free to record a small 2 min screencast reflection. Just processing and sharing what school life has been like for you over the past few months is hugely helpful for everyone. As we reinvent education one day at a time sharing even the smallest successes and failures can be tremendously valuable. – Looking forward to catching up this weekend!
@acampbellrogers @tfaucher @mmoore @hjepson @elee @jgravel
Brian thank you for the honest blog post here, I am having a similar experience to you, I have wanted to try new and bold things in my classroom, however I have felt like failing is not an option. With that being said this year has opened new possibilities and I think it is the perfect opportunity to model how learning and trying new things can cause bumps along the road and how we can move forward from that.
Hi Brian,
My apologies for not seeing this post until now! As I read it all I kept thinking was “me too!”, which makes me think the way you were feeling about trying new things is something many teachers must be struggling with. I still get hesitant when I considering changing something for a course because I know the success rate of the “old way” and there’s a chance the “new way” could be worse for my students, which holds me back.
I love your positivity I felt while reading your post. It is so easy to revert to negativity at a time like this but you are seeing this pandemic as an opportunity for growth and change.