{"id":201,"date":"2017-04-19T16:04:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/?p=201"},"modified":"2017-04-19T16:04:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T16:04:10","slug":"on-failure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/2017\/04\/19\/on-failure\/","title":{"rendered":"On Failure"},"content":{"rendered":"

This blog post has been rattling around in my brain, partially formed, for some time now. Something inside me was not willing to let it out by actually sitting down and writing it and then hitting \u201cpost\u201d. But the time has come. Yesterday, catching up on my fellow Cohort-ers blogs, I came across @lmcbeth<\/a>\u2019s \u00a0\u201c<\/span>I\u2019m starting my vlog<\/span><\/a>\u201d and @sregli\u2019s \u201c<\/span>Do I need more grit?<\/span><\/a>\u201d blog posts. These two posts were the kick in the pants that I needed to come clean about my own failure lately. I know that the Cohort 21 gang is not a judgmental group, but there is still a certain amount of fear around sharing your shortcomings in a public forum such as this. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Action Plan failure<\/b><\/h4>\n

At the third F2F, I was excited to come up with a second action plan for my second year as a member of Cohort 21. With an eye to my eventual goal of taking on more of a leadership role with regards to technology at CDS, I focused my action plan on this HMW question: <\/span>How might we manage and improve the student user experience with teacher resources and learning management software?<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Way back in January, shortly after having finalized my Action Plan question, I had an email from the Adobe Education Exchange detailing the upcoming start of a new free course on their education platform: \u201cUser Experience Design: UX to UI\u201d. The description read as follows: <\/span><\/p>\n

In this course participants will start off examining the users needs and creating relevant documentation that allows a digital, interactive project to have a better fitting, functional, final design<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I was elated. This was exactly what I needed to take action on my action plan. I enrolled and anxiously waited for the start of the course on February 13. And then\u2026<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 it was snowboard season and I was all of a sudden overwhelmed by the amount of work that was required to convene that league.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 my Comm Tech course got incredibly busy as I was developing brand new content for students to work with as part of a guided inquiry module. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 I told myself that I would spend March Break catching up on the four weeks of coursework that I hadn\u2019t even yet begun. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 March Break was almost over and I still hadn\u2019t opened up the course, let alone completed a single assignment or participated in a single weekly live class. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026 I essentially gave up and considered myself a massive failure for enrolling in a course and not taking a single step to complete it. <\/span><\/p>\n

So my initial excitement about the relevance and the timeliness of the course ended up crumbling into a mountain of feelings of failure and inadequacy. Now, with just days to go before the final F2F, I haven\u2019t taken a single step toward implementing my Action Plan: no research, no reading, no polling of stakeholders, nothing. #epicfail<\/span><\/p>\n

The blogging failure<\/b><\/h4>\n

Last year, I felt like a rockstar blogger. I composed posts in my head while driving home from work or walking the dogs, and then I actually sat down to write them within a reasonable amount of time. This year, I\u2019m not sure what changed. While I was constantly coming up with ideas for posts, for some reason I could not bring myself to put fingers to keyboard. I started out strongly, with five posts before the Christmas break, but since then, I\u2019ve stagnated. I don\u2019t get it: I really love blogging and want to do it more, so I wish I knew what had changed or how to fix it. <\/span><\/p>\n

The coaching failure<\/b><\/h4>\n

I was over the moon when @jmedved<\/a>\u00a0and @gnichols<\/a> asked me last April to be a coach for C21 this year. I couldn\u2019t believe that they saw leadership potential in me, but I was determined to do a good job and not let them down. When it came down to it, though, whether at the F2F sessions or on blogs and social media, I feel as though I failed at this as well. Other coaches were able to offer excellent advice, ask thought-provoking questions, and share relevant resources with C21 members. I felt like all I could offer was a bit of cheerleading from the sidelines: \u201cThank you for sharing!\u201d My fear of being inadequate and having nothing to offer held me back from hosting a Hangout or Twitter chat all year. I worry that I don\u2019t even deserve to attend Friday\u2019s F2F as I feel like I\u2019ve contributed nothing to this year\u2019s Cohort. <\/span><\/p>\n

Everything\u2019s not lost<\/b><\/h4>\n

Despite this general feeling of failure and lack of motivation lately, there is some positive news to report. I need to remind myself that all is not lost despite feeling like this year\u2019s Action Plan is a lost cause. Here are a few things worth celebrating: <\/span><\/p>\n

Progress on last year\u2019s Action Plan<\/i><\/strong><\/h6>\n

I feel as though I\u2019ve made significant progress on last year\u2019s AP, which was framed as <\/span>How might we restructure Comm Tech to provide more & better opportunities for personalization and project-based learning? \u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

I am committing to writing a second blog post this week (!!) to outline some of the major changes and initiatives that I\u2019ve been working on with respect to this. <\/span><\/p>\n

New job<\/i><\/strong><\/h6>\n

With tons of support and encouragement from @gnichols<\/a>, @jmedved<\/a>, and @lmcbeth<\/a>, I applied for and was the successful candidate for a new position as Technology Integration Specialist for the Middle and Senior Schools at CDS. This is my dream position and I am so looking forward to starting it, though its start will be delayed for one more year because \u2026.<\/span><\/p>\n

Life changes<\/i><\/strong><\/h6>\n

\u2026. I will be off next year on maternity leave! Baby Weening-Levesque is due August 20 and Shawn and I are beyond thrilled. <\/span><\/p>\n

I do actually wonder if some of the lack of motivation about the previously-mentioned failures might have something to do with the mindshift that seems to have taken place in my brain with the news that we are expecting. Hormones, maybe? <\/span><\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/b><\/h4>\n

In any case, the (perceived) failures of this year will not define me. I am here to shout from the rooftops that I am putting this behind me and starting fresh. Every day is a new day, and every morning an opportunity to make changes that I didn\u2019t make yesterday. <\/span><\/p>\n

I loved this <\/a>(always so timely!) post <\/a>from Seth Godin\u2019s blog and think it fits in well here:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Sometimes it feels like Seth Godin just gets me, you know?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cYou learn by doing it. Actually, by <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>doing it. You learn by doing it wrong, by falling off, by getting back on, by doing it again. PS this approach works for lots of things, not just bikes. Most things, in fact.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

We tell our students that failure is a \u201cfirst attempt in learning\u201d. That it is through failure that they grow and learn how to approach a problem differently next time. Failure cannot be the final destination. It is simply a part of the journey \u2013 a station along the railroad, a rest stop on the highway, an airport where we have a layover. We pass through it, but it\u2019s not where we stay and spend our time. So I\u2019m outta here \u2013 see ya! \ud83d\ude42<\/span><\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This blog post has been rattling around in my brain, partially formed, for some time now. Something inside me was not willing to let it out by actually sitting down and writing it and then hitting \u201cpost\u201d. But the time has come. Yesterday, catching up on my fellow Cohort-ers blogs, I came across @lmcbeth\u2019s \u00a0\u201cI\u2019m … Continue reading “On Failure”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":205,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/jenniferweening\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}