As I have worked my way through Petroski’s book, I have been struck many times with the thought that failure is not always failure. In many ways. what we term failure in one way, is an unlooked for success in others. I think about the serendipitous sorts of discoveries that have resulted from “failures”. The glue that ended up being used in Post-it notes being among my favorite because I love the things! In the classroom we see these kinds of “failures” all the time. Yes, a student might get and answer “wrong”, but is that a failure if that wrong answer gives me insight into the child’s misconceptions and allows me to lead the child to a path of understanding?
Some failures are also intentional. I had a great conversation with a chemical engineer this past week. As he was telling me about his work, he explained that he had to design something that would intentionally fail in the midst of a process so that the next stage could happen. This kind of “planned failure” must happen whenever there is a situation where a chain reaction is necessary. Have you ever seen a test where the teacher put a “hard” question on it to challenge/stretch the kids who already have a good grasp of the concepts? Isn’t the teacher here anticipating that some kids will”fail” the question?
I absolutely use really hard questions in that way! I think some of my super bright kids actually have a NEED for that, to push against their own limits. I also "reward" failure in a way that is (I think) likely to make kids braver. When we did engineering challenges in small groups in class, often a group or individual would appear embarrassed or ashamed by a failure relative to the successes of other groups. Usually that student is a super bright kid who is unaccustomed to failure, period! I would make a big deal out of debriefing each solution in terms of what it could teach ALL of us. I would thank the group profusely for helping us see a process that could give us an example to "diagnose" and we would publicly talk through all the things that went right, and then what part of the decisionmaking process ultimately caused the failure. I reassured them all up front that their grade for the activity was based on their engagement and contribution, not at all jeopardized by failure of their paper bridge or whatever. The kids get so competitive right away and it seems necessary to inject humor when things go wrong. After all, these are supposed to be learning experiences! I also have to explicitly teach kids how to appropriately react to the failures of others. Our media culture is so crass that they can be very unkind to each other, unless I actually teach those skills. Imagine the trauma of being part of a design team that causes loss of life- devastating.
ReplyDeleteSo true Kelly! I worked really hard to model a lot of constructive criticism before I let the students have a go at it. They did pick up on, and appreciated I think, that our class discussions were about how something could be done better. It was an exchange of information and ideas, not a discussion about failure.
ReplyDeleteFailure can be the ultimate motivator! I think of the Marshmallow Challenge that we do with the whole grade level at the beginning of each year. Its meant as more of a whole grade level team building activity, but the discussion and results are incredibly rich.
ReplyDeletehttp://marshmallowchallenge.com/
We end up with 12-15 groups of students. Ultimately at the end of the time only 2-4 groups actually have a standing structure. Like Kelly's example, many of the students who are use to succeeding might find themselves with nothing to show for their work, due to a last minute placement of the marshmallow and the resulting toppling of their structure.
What ensues is a rich discussion about why did some structures fail? Why did some succeed? How did groups work? We encourage the kids to walk around and learn from each other. And when we ask groups if they could improve if they could do it again we have never gotten a "no" for a response. The kids are eager to take what they've learned from their failures and put it to good use to make them successful next time around.
In this case, we almost depend on their being failure by the majority of the groups. It is the reason for the success of the discussions that follow. I've even had the occasional kid go home and raid the spaghetti at home to test out some ideas. Nothing better than a student who is self-motivated by the desire to succeed after failing.
Petroski talks alot about failure. I try to tell my students that it is important to use your scienctific models to avoid faiure, but that ultimately we test our designs (prototypes) so that we can FIX them. They make thier best attempts, test them, and then figure out how to improve. Many of them have never had to fix or improve anything. As Kelly said, many of the best students have barely failed at anything. It is good for them to learn to adapt and work on something that isn't just an "instantaneous gratification". I believe that with more entertainment and less projects at home, some of the students will only experience failure at school. I have seldom experienced failure when texting my wife or watching televisoin. In fact, it is a running joke in popular cultere to have an "epic fail!". These failurs are usually humorous, but they are not true failures. 10 years ago they would have been called "bloopers". I always try to give my students authentic failure opportunities :-)
ReplyDeleteA great point Corbin, it is imperative that we give our students opportunities to fail so that they learn to deal with it with grace and learn to listen to an accept suggestions and comments from others. Collaboration is key to successful work.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree that we need to push students and make an environment for them to safely "fail". It is an extremely important life skill to be able to redouble your efforts after a failure and to learn from it. I have seen many students immobilized by the fear they that their idea might not work and they are not willing to start- many sight this as a sign of a perfectionist. I found it slightly amusing at the start of the book that Petroski himself said he was so overtaken by the fear of failure that could possibly lead to injuring another person that he avoided the possibility by going to graduate school.
ReplyDeleteWe have consistently reviewed the multitude of real life skills that students learn by engaging them in a curriculum that is rich with engineering experiences. This blog is the first time I have encountered teachers instructing about constructive criticism and will now employ the engineering tasks as a vehicle for this as well. Thank you for the idea.
Andy- I loved the marshmallow challenge! I think it's a great way to build collaborative skills as well as learning some things about the design process and hidden assumptions. A design can seem so good on paper, but then when you execute it in real life - well, it doesn't always work the way you hoped. I agree that this is a real eye opener for some students. I think learning the value prototypes is an important element of teaching about the design process.
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