Ready, Set, Fail!: Destigmatizing Failure Among Students
Failure is Proof that They’re Trying
Everything we do at Curvd Learning supports empowering students to become resilient adults. Our network of education experts has identified three fundamental principles that underlie every lesson we teach and every resource we equip teachers and parents with:
Trailblaze Your Own Path: Encouraging students to self-direct their learning pathways by following their passions to drive their experience through inquiry.
Tackle Messy, Real-World Problems: Engaging students in relevant, authentic projects where they face real-world challenges, so they can identify and solve real-world problems.
Ready, Set, Fail!: Creating opportunities for students to regularly face challenges, experience failure and reflect on their learning to gain comfort with ambiguity.
Each principle reflects the idea that our entire job as educators is to prepare kids for life after school. If we spoon-feed them information the entire time they never learn what it takes to build healthy relationships, have a sense of self, figure out their passions, how to navigate careers, family, life, and even their own individual values.
Diving Deeper Into the Principle: Ready, Set, Fail!
In our culture failure is typically seen as a negative experience, when in reality it’s essential to progress and growth. No discovery was ever made without failure. Nothing worth doing was ever done without a series of missteps. That’s why we work to destigmatize failure.
“The idea of learning from failure ties in with social-emotional learning,” said Mara Morrison, Curvd Learning head of curriculum design. “We can develop an IQ to a certain extent but your EQ is a muscle that you can grow throughout your entire life. Part of emotional intelligence is empathy. If you can’t identify your own feelings, you can’t identify those in others.”
The Curvd Learning model encourages students to fail-forward by putting themselves out there to try something new, especially if it poses a challenge they must overcome. At our lab school, Tahoe Expedition Academy, educators frequently introduce new challenges to a lesson or project to prompt students to identify the problem and work through solutions on their own.
“As teachers we know the result may be a lesser final product, but challenging students in this way mimics things that happen in the real world,” said Laura Quarin, Curvd Learning curriculum designer. “We’re talking about things like time constraints or challenging groupings. In these situations, there aren’t right or wrong answers, it’s what they want to do with the information that we’re looking for. These challenges force them to struggle and dig into the process more, which elevates and amplifies the learning process.”
After setting up a situation that will cause discomfort or stress, teachers should debrief with the class. Create space for students to reflect on what went wrong and how they shifted gears – this is the true learning process. Once students see themselves mastering a challenge, they develop confidence in their abilities to problem-solve and are better equipped for bigger challenges in the future.
“To be an active citizen, a positive change maker, an innovative, creative human being, you have to embrace the idea of mis-stepping, of failing, or not being successful right off the bat and then learning what to do when that happens,” Quarin said.
No scientist or expert in any field set out to do something great and nailed it the first time.
Tips to Implement Positive Fail Moments
Know Your Students
Understanding how your students process and react to information is essential to initiating a challenge that may result in failure. Teachers should know their students well enough to know when they’re entering their freak-out zone and should add in an element of support.
Building a Classroom Community
Apart from knowing your students as individuals it’s important to also build relationships as a classroom community to create a safe space for students to experience failure. Being in an environment where students feel they have secure relationships and trust creates space for risk-taking and makes it safe to fail.
Don’t Give Away All the Answers
Rather than giving students the answers, Curvd expert educators recommend asking students what they think the answer is. If they are unsure, challenge them to ask their peers or other adults they trust and start to think about the subject in a new way.
“Deemphasize the product and really lean into what their process is,” Quarin said. “That is the messy part. If you’re engaging on an authentic level, it’s a messy process. Deemphasis of the product elevates and amplifies the learning process.”
Science Projects & Activities Lend Themselves to Failure
Science projects and activities are perfect opportunities for students to strategically and creatively fail as scientific findings are rooted in a series of failures. Create labs or experiences where the students’ hypothesis will fail but they also reflect on why they think it was wrong.
“The reflection piece is important no matter what. Emphasize how they felt they did on different learning objectives of the assignment. Use the times they hit a roadblock or conflict with their group to reflect on what happened, how it made them feel and what they learned from it. That last piece allows them to reflect on the negatives. It’s important to let kids feel bad at times, it’s a human reaction we don’t want to gloss over. What they learn from failing gives them direction and focus, so they don’t dwell on those bad feelings,” Morrison said.
Reflection is Key
We learn from our mistakes. We learn what works from trial and error. That’s why getting fixated on the right answer actually negates the learning process. Rather than teaching students to regurgitate information, we want them to be empowered to come to those conclusions on their own. Focus on the entire learning process rather than just the outcome because the process is how we get to mastery.
Activities & Resources to Implement with Students
Learn about Curvd Curveballs for another resource to start introducing unexpected challenges into the learning environment. By identify challenges and working to tackle curveballs, students see their own ability to problem-solve and are better equipped to handle even bigger challenges in the future.