Principals Message

SMART FAILING

Mistakes and failures are keys to learning. They make our brain begin compiling information about the experience and grow bigger. While the brain returns to close to its original size after the learning experience, it retains new neural pathways by taking in new information, compiling the key takeaways from trial and error. Making mistakes matures the brain, resulting in more efficient synapses and fundamentally altered neurons. In short, failure can actually make you smarter. But not all mistakes are the same.

THREE KINDS OF FAILURE

Preventable: These are a sign of insufficient training or knowledge and can be avoided by filling the gaps.

Unavoidable: Here the complexity or uncertainty of the task makes mistakes quite likely and the trick is to learn from small mistakes to avoid bigger ones.

Intelligent: These failures are at the frontier of learning, where mistakes are essential to gaining new knowledge and moving forward.

HOW TO DISTINGUISH BETWEEN DIFFERENT TYPES OF FAILURES AND HELP STUDENTS LEARN FROM THEM.

Frame the work accurately. This involves developing a shared understanding of the kinds of failures that can be expected in each context.

Encourage truth-tellers. People who draw attention to bad news, questions, concerns and errors should be encouraged and rewarded; they provide a pathway to figuring out how to fix the situation and learn from it.

Be humble about limits. Teachers need to set an example by acknowledging what they don’t know and mistakes that have been made.

Invite participation. Create opportunities to detect and think through failures and engage in intelligent experimentation.

Set boundaries and hold people accountable. Students will feel safer to experiment and not be perfect when teachers clarify what’s acceptable and what’s not.

Educators need to create cultures that allow for intelligent failures at the frontier.

We need to set up experiments for the purpose of learning and innovating – and that means planning to fail.

When our students observe us doing so, they are more likely to accept failure and learn from it, to listen to feedback and try to perform better the next time.

Acknowledgment: “The Power of Failure” by Donna Orem in Independent School, Summer 2018