Failure

Fear is the opposite of Success. Failure is a stepping stone to success. We focus so much on failure today as a negative that we hold ourselves back from success. How can encourage our students to feel comfortable to take risks today so they can become lifelong learners?

We need to make failure a positive experience for learning.  We need to allow learning through experimentation and discovery. The world is constantly and quickly changing. We are teaching in a world that’s different today than the one we grew up in. It is our job as teachers to build an environment that encourages risk taking.

I think back to my personal experience. Over the last 10 years in my short work experience, the tech I had when I started has already been replaced at least twice. Good docs and google drive have transitioned from an afterthought to now being an integral part of many organizations. This was not something I could have learned when I was studying in university. It was something I learned on the job as the technology was being implemented. I learned by taking risk and trying it out. We need our students to have this kind of resolve.

I look forward to brainstorming creative ways of encouraging failure. Failure is a scientific process. Maybe there’s a way to integrate science into all aspects of curriculum by encouraging our students to ask the right questions and not be afraid of risk. These kinds of people could also be called scientists….but I’ll have to leave that definition up to you. It is very STEM friendly though when you think about it.

-Joe