Blog Post #8
Let’s create a collection of failure stories! Share one from you own life or from that of someone famous.
Blog Post #1
Imagine you just won Teacher of the Year for not just the 1st time but the 3rd time in a row, like John Taylor Gatto. What would you talk about with a national platform in regards to education?
There are many times that I feel I have failed as a parent, it is hard raising teenagers! One of my own children has quit college twice (two different colleges). Back when I was growing up college was deemed necessary and everyone "had to go/ had to get a degree." So when I found out that he decided college wasn't for him the second time, I struggled to understand why. I felt like a failure as a parent because he started and stopped so many things, including college. I didn't know what we as parents were doing wrong and I couldn't figure out why it was so hard for my son to finish college. It was maddening! However, as time passed I realized that the world we currently live in compared to the one I grew up in has drastically changed and not everyone needs to go to college or get a degree. The Learning Game book even talked about allowing our kids to try things and then quit if it's not meeting their needs or fulfilling them. Reading that helped me to connect the dots and feel better as a parent. Even though my son decided college wasn't for him, he has created a business that is doing well and that he enjoys. That's what truly matters!
ReplyDeleteFailure has been a constant companion in my life! There are so many days when I feel like I am falling short everywhere. My house is a mess, I am not as patient as I want to be as a mom or wife, I forget to check in with friends, and I leave school wondering if I reached every student the way they deserved. It often feels like no matter how hard I try, something is always slipping. But I have to remind myself that I am not necessarily bad at these things, it just means I care. I do not know if I will ever be able to feel like I am doing enough, but I keep showing up. Maybe I will get it right, maybe I won’t! All I can do is keep trying even when I do not feel like I am ever going to be enough.
ReplyDeleteA failure story that I have which happened recently was I was teaching my students a new math game on SAVVAS. I teach first grade and this is my first year, I’m still learning the curriculum. With that, I was teaching students how to play the game, “Go Fish” in a math way of adding cards. Before the lesson, I reviewed how to play the game and felt confident show students how to play it, but once I had students playing it, I realized that I taught the students how to play the game wrong. They weren’t even saying Go Fish, I felt like a failure, but moved on from it. Students didn’t even notice that we were playing the game incorrectly.
ReplyDeleteOne story of failure is when I was student teaching Kindergarten and I had thought the students about clouds and we were creating cloud pictures to show what they had learned. The children had access to cotton balls, blue paper for the sky, glue bottles. I turned around after working with a student to another student holding the glue bottle over a classmates head like she was squeezing the glue out onto the boy’s head. I completely freaked out and screamed, “ah what are you doing?” I completely scared the girl and the thing was she never had the glue bottle open. Her and the little boy were pretending they making clouds over their heads. It took a lot to gain the little girls normal outgoing, willing to try anything behavior.
ReplyDeleteAs a parent, I have faced many failures from over reacting on things to my oldest child having learning difficulties like not being able to speak words until he was 5 years old. I would expect he could do school just like other kids in the public school just have an IEP to help level the playing field. I was faced with many times of seeing he was not learning anything from the 8 hr days at school and 3+ hrs homework each night. I failed by thinking that public school is the only way for kids to prove to society that they are fully capable of succeeding in the world. After two years of alternative schooling, he has proved that he can handle many challenging tasks thrown at him in school to work settings and his class school work by adjusting his learning from teacher taught to a more hands on, show what you are learning, and relating his math, science, language arts, and history classes to real-life situations and stories.
I have failed many times. The most obvious is as a HS Girls Basketball Coach. Of course I have had failed lessons and failed relationships, etc.... but the most public has been as a coach. I have lost three Region Championship games, three opportunities for my student-athletes to experience the State Tournament -- in a row. We work so hard and get so close, yet fall so far. What it has taught me and now what I can bring to all my students is perspective. I am able to see basketball, or any sport, as a game of inches and almosts. It was a matter of an inch that missed a shot we needed to advance. Now, is that worth the tears shed? Does that mean one team is any better than the other? Does that one inch disregard all the work and time spent? Nope -- we now talk a lot more about enjoying the grind of practice. We embrace the journey during the season... the friendships made at the pre-game dinners, the dance parties we have int he locker room before a game, the amazing treats the parents make for the bus rides. It has taught me to find the lessons in the experience whether win or lose. It has allowed me to give my students an experience that goes beyond wins and losses. The goal is different and it is a lot more transferrable to real life.
ReplyDeleteFailure... Being a parent I feel this more often than I'd like to admit. Teenagers are tough and I don't have all the answers. Some days I yell and lose my mind and then think I should have handled that better, why did I snap? Other days I think we are doing the right thing with our rules and expectations and one of them does something I never dreamed he would try... I question what we did that could have led him to try something that he knows is wrong and could harm him. I've failed to notice when they were acting out that they were crying for help... not discipline. Other times I was too soft when I should have dropped the hammer and made them solve their own problems. Parenting is like walking a tight rope and most days, I fall off and have to try again and again. I'm sure glad no ones taking away points in this game.
ReplyDeleteMy failure story:
ReplyDeleteI will never forget wanting to quit when I was training for pre-season for my D1 Soccer school. I had a torn acl in the past, which meant I had to wear a HUGE brace, and it was really frustrating when it came to running. I constantly felt like I was burning out/ slowing down. I remember one day on the track when my dad was timing my run, I legit stopped running and just started crying. I told him I couldn't do it. I gave up for about two weeks, and one day I went back to it. Long story short, I failed the time I wanted to meet for almost a month. I never thought I would be a starter on the field at my college. Fast forward to a few months later. Not only did I reach the time I was striving for, but I also beat my record in the years to follow. I couldn't believe myself!
One “failure” in my life was when I attempted to open a full-time nature preschool. My vision was to homeschool my own children while also creating a nature-based learning experience for other children in my community. I had big plans to transform my 100-year-old barn into a schoolhouse and nature center and to leave the public school system to run the program full time. I invested a lot into the dream. I earned my nature-based teaching certificate, attended many trainings, and even had my home and property licensed to care for children. But life circumstances changed—moving, deployments, and eventually divorce. Because of those challenges, I was not able to bring the full vision to life the way I had imagined. However, I’ve come to look at this experience differently. Instead of seeing it as a failure, I see it as a learning experience. It taught me new skills, gave me valuable training, and deepened my passion for nature-based education. I realized that sometimes we need to adjust our attachment to the exact details of a dream while holding onto the purpose behind it. While the full-time school did not happen (or has not happened yet), I still found a way to pursue that passion. I now offer four weeks of nature camps each year so I can continue sharing outdoor, nature-based learning experiences with children. The dream may look different than I originally imagined, but the purpose behind it is still very much alive.
ReplyDeleteOne failure story from my own life comes from raising three boys, including two teenagers. There have been times when I tried to solve problems for them instead of letting them learn from their mistakes. For example, when one of my sons forgot an assignment, my first instinct was to step in and fix it. Later, I realized that by doing that, I was taking away an opportunity for him to learn responsibility.
ReplyDeleteI changed my approach and allowed natural consequences to happen. It was difficult at first, but over time, my kids started taking more ownership of their schoolwork and planning ahead. Even though it felt like a failure in my parenting at the time, it helped me grow and taught my children independence and resilience.
This experience reminds me that failure, both for adults and kids, can lead to growth. It also helps me encourage my students to learn from mistakes instead of being afraid of them.
Like others who have posted, I think the failures experienced in parenting come to mind first. We all have our ideas of how we should respond to our children in any number of situations, but all to often we react rather than respond. We respond to disregulation in our children with disregulation of our own. We snap and scream rather than take the time to first breathe. Luckily, we always have a chance to regroup and repair. My children will grow up knowing that life and emotions are messy sometimes, but they will also know that they are loved and respected enough for me to admit when I was wrong and to apologize. I tell them often that like every human, I am a "work in progress."
ReplyDeleteLet’s create a collection of failure stories! Share one from you own life or from that of someone famous.
ReplyDeleteWhen I think about failure stories - or even letting my kids "quit" - I think through one of my teenage daughters - we've always stood by the moto - if you are going to start something you will see it through to the end - but one particular season - she was miserable and wanted to quit - we did everything in our power to help her get beyond the struggles but in the end - we let her quit - as parents we felt like failures - where had we gone wrong - but in the end I think we were awakened to realizing it was the best decision we could have let her wrestle with and in the end decided for herself - if quitting the team is what she wanted - then should do it - and she did and in hindsight it couldn't have been a better learning experience both for her and us as her parents.