I consider myself to be a very encouraging, patient, and understanding person who genuinely cares about my students. However, yesterday I did something that may, at first, seem a bit harsh and out of character. I told my four AP Computer Science Principles classes that I expect them to fail…. and not just once either… I told them that I expect them to fail repeatedly.
You should have seen their faces and felt the energy in the room. I think I could feel their hearts sink and their stomachs tighten. I let them sit with that for a second, and then proceeded to tell them that I also expect them to keep going once they fail. That every failure is just a “First Attempt In Learning”.
If they are failing, they’re trying something that is challenging them. They are learning something new. They are growing! I fail every day, sometimes more miserably than others, but I keep going. They will see me fail – and that’s ok. I am human. They are human. We would never expect that someone master a sport, instrument, etc. in the first try – nor will I expect this from them and they shouldn’t expect it from themselves either. What I will do is push them to keep going. Be there for them when they need to talk through a problem (which they oftentimes solve themselves, but then thank me for – so I remind them that they did it themselves). Rather than tell them what to do, I try to make sure to ask my students repeatedly is “What do you think?” My goal here is for them to be active in their own learning.
So, let’s embrace failing. Failure is a guaranteed part of learning and we learn just as much, if not more, from our failures than our successes. Now we will see how this goes over when I tell all the parents at Back-to-School Night that I expect their students to fail.