"Successful Failure"

I can not remember where I first heard this but I can't take credit for coming up with it myself. Either way, as soon as I heard it, it made perfect sense.

It seems to be just the opposite of what teachers naturally feel that they should do, right? Teachers are supposed to build confidence and help their students experience success. Why would we allow them to fail? Wouldn't that keep them from trying?

No.

With the right amount of encouragement and motivation, failure can actually be a student's motivation to try even harder. Not only that, but they can (and will) learn from their mistakes. Through failure and working through these failures, students are able to better understand (ultimately master) a skill. When this happens students feel accomplished.

I want to reference one of my previous posts (Guided Math in HS:...). In this post I talked about the "I do, we do, you do" approach that was wasting so much of our time.

What good does it do to spend 45 minutes to an hour each day standing in front of 30 students explaining to them how to solve math problems?

Are they actually learning anything?

Maybe...

But the real learning takes place when they are struggling through the work. Trying to figure it out. Alone or through collaboration. I have heard this referred to as discourse. (can't remember where that one came from either but you can find more info HERE.)

The teacher is there for support and to fill in gaps. Some gaps are larger than others but we can not do everything for them. Showing students every possible variation of a problem that they may encounter (I did this, so I know) does not prepare them to actually know what to do when this encounter takes place. "What if you see one like this? What if I change this?" I don't think it is necessarily a bad idea to mention that parts of the problem can change and that different variations are a possibility. It is not, however, necessary, or even beneficial, to try and solve each of these problems for them.

It's a lot like raising kids. As a parent, you protect your children and try to prepare them for the world. We know that it is impossible to prepare them for everything that they will experience and every problem they will face. We hope that we have given them enough knowledge to be able to figure out what to do and what steps to take. If not, we offer advice and help them figure it out how to work through it. This is where the learning takes place. Even though the next problem may not be the same they will have learned strategies that they can apply as they work through it.

Let's encourage our students to struggle through solving problems so that they can experience success through failure.

After all, "You don't learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and falling over." (Richard Branson)

Here is another one I have heard and love...and can't remember who said it.

"Know what to do when you don't know what to do."