For too long, we have protected our kids from failure. Our society is focused on the winners and we want to make sure our child is one of them. A winner. But the truth remains that everyone can't be a winner. Our kids need to learn how to fail. And how to keep trying, after failure, to succeed.
Failure is part of success. Failure teaches us to persevere, prepares us to meet challenges, and helps us learn how to be understanding. Failure gives us character.
Failure gives us an opportunity to improve. Failure is a chance to try something new and different. Failure helps us to evaluate our strengths and weaknesses and be realistic about our abilities. Failure refines our strengths, narrows our weaknesses and turns our abilities into assets.
Yet... we remain afraid of failure. We don't try because we're afraid we won't succeed. So we protect kids from failure because of our own fears. We give everyone a ribbon or a trophy because that is so much easier than learning how to fail graciously.
We help kids too much with assignments. Or, worse yet, do it for them. We want our students to succeed and the easiest path is the straight line from assignment to completion to grade. The most educational path is from the assignment, to self-evaluation, to corrections or re-dos, to peer evaluation, to corrections or re-dos, and finally to teacher evaluation with feedback so improvement can be made. Not an easy path to undertake. Frustrating. Time consuming. But so necessary in the development of a child.
Not everyone can or will succeed in the same way. That's okay. Everyone still needs to take ownership of their abilities or assets and how best they can use them.
(For more of Kim Frencken's writing and information about her educational products, check out her blog, Chocolate for the Teacher.)
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