So, the
flu caught me last week and I was unable to attend class. I caught up with a
couple of my classmates from class and they informed me that we had a discussion
about failure in class. I thought and I thought and then I thought some more
about failures role in the classroom and even now as I’m sitting on a train
listening to a man who has self-appointed himself tour guide, I can’t say that I
fully have my decision 100% made on failure’s role in the classroom but this is
what I have so far. I do believe failure is a necessity in learning because students
need to know how to handle failure. Now I’m not saying that failure means
getting a F on a paper or 2/10 on worksheet; failure means different things to
different individuals. When I was in elementary school it meant getting a B. I
almost had a heart attack when I got a B in English in 5th grade.
Now let me give you some background to better understand that heart attack.
I grew up in Brookfield, Il (yes near that famous zoo and no I could not hear the animals at night) and went to Congress Park Elementary school (go dolphins!). School came easily to me (it did help that my mother was a book worm and my father loved numbers so they passed those passions onto me) and I was considered gifted. My school did not have funding for a full on gifted (or extended learning) program- in the beginning a special teacher came once a week and pulled a group of about 5-8 out of us out for reading and again for math then by fourth grade there wasn’t enough money for the teacher so they made an extra packet for us and sent us out into the hallway to do it during regular class time. In fifth grade the packets were gone and I began to coast (an attitude that I still struggle against to this day). I wasn’t challenged and when I finished my work early I’d get in trouble for talking so soon I began to space out and slowly complete my work with ease because I could. I always got A’s and never struggled to understand a concept even when I missed a day due to illness. I guess I was coasting a little too much and when I say my mid quarter report of a B in Language Arts, I wanted to cry. This is an opportunity I wish my teacher would have taught me to stop my coasting ways and help me find ways to make things more challenging so I would not lose focus instead I did every single extra credit opportunity to get the 70 points I needed to move my B to an A.
Now some of those extra credit opportunities were definitely meant for students who struggled with Language Arts but my teacher did not say I couldn’t so I made 10 bumper stickers and easily whipped out another 10 poems (most of which were not very good). I moved away after the 5th grade and went to a middle school that had an amazing gifted program (PAL classes), where I was challenged but still did not have to stress ever about school. My 8th grade teacher Mrs. Babcock for language arts kept warning us of some wall, we would hit and usually the response was “What wall?” I did not hit that wall until freshman year of high school in honors English and boy did I hit that wall hard. I struggled in honors English until junior year when I made the decision to drop down. Part of me wishes I could have handled not being the smartest person in the class and understood this struggle would help me later in college and may have bitten my procrastination problem in the butt. Instead of coming to terms with my failures I decided to shy away to the back of the class and just stop trying (what was the point of trying if I never got higher than a B, anyways). I wish I had a teacher that would have explained that failing is not the end of the world that failing does not mean I’m dumb and that the classroom is a perfectly safe place to fail in fact fail all over the place in elementary school and middle school-learn from every mistake so when you get to college you understand what works for you! If you have any comments about the idea of failure or want to share your story with me please share!
I grew up in Brookfield, Il (yes near that famous zoo and no I could not hear the animals at night) and went to Congress Park Elementary school (go dolphins!). School came easily to me (it did help that my mother was a book worm and my father loved numbers so they passed those passions onto me) and I was considered gifted. My school did not have funding for a full on gifted (or extended learning) program- in the beginning a special teacher came once a week and pulled a group of about 5-8 out of us out for reading and again for math then by fourth grade there wasn’t enough money for the teacher so they made an extra packet for us and sent us out into the hallway to do it during regular class time. In fifth grade the packets were gone and I began to coast (an attitude that I still struggle against to this day). I wasn’t challenged and when I finished my work early I’d get in trouble for talking so soon I began to space out and slowly complete my work with ease because I could. I always got A’s and never struggled to understand a concept even when I missed a day due to illness. I guess I was coasting a little too much and when I say my mid quarter report of a B in Language Arts, I wanted to cry. This is an opportunity I wish my teacher would have taught me to stop my coasting ways and help me find ways to make things more challenging so I would not lose focus instead I did every single extra credit opportunity to get the 70 points I needed to move my B to an A.
Now some of those extra credit opportunities were definitely meant for students who struggled with Language Arts but my teacher did not say I couldn’t so I made 10 bumper stickers and easily whipped out another 10 poems (most of which were not very good). I moved away after the 5th grade and went to a middle school that had an amazing gifted program (PAL classes), where I was challenged but still did not have to stress ever about school. My 8th grade teacher Mrs. Babcock for language arts kept warning us of some wall, we would hit and usually the response was “What wall?” I did not hit that wall until freshman year of high school in honors English and boy did I hit that wall hard. I struggled in honors English until junior year when I made the decision to drop down. Part of me wishes I could have handled not being the smartest person in the class and understood this struggle would help me later in college and may have bitten my procrastination problem in the butt. Instead of coming to terms with my failures I decided to shy away to the back of the class and just stop trying (what was the point of trying if I never got higher than a B, anyways). I wish I had a teacher that would have explained that failing is not the end of the world that failing does not mean I’m dumb and that the classroom is a perfectly safe place to fail in fact fail all over the place in elementary school and middle school-learn from every mistake so when you get to college you understand what works for you! If you have any comments about the idea of failure or want to share your story with me please share!
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