Do kids really learn from failure? Why conventional wisdom may be wrong ➜

Strauss quoting Alfie Kohn:

The idea that “kids today” have it too easy is part of a broader conservative worldview that’s been around for a long, long time.  Children are routinely described as coddled and indulged, overprotected and overpraised.  But I’ve been unable to find any data to support this claim, … there’s simply no proof that the phenomenon is widespread, much less that it’s more common today than it was 10, 20, 50, or 100 years ago.

I agree. This tends to be back in my day nonsense. Everyone has it tough in various degrees, and each generation is faced with its own set of challenges.

In fact, studies find that when kids fail, they tend to construct an image of themselves as incompetent and even helpless, which leads to more failure. …if an adult declines to step in and help when kids are frustrated, that doesn’t make them more self-sufficient or self-confident:  It mostly leaves them feeling less supported, less secure about their own worthiness, and more doubtful about the extent to which the parent or teacher really cares about them.

I struggle with this balance of stepping in and butting out. It’s a tough call. I want to support my own children and students, but I don’t want them to feel like they can’t to things for themselves.

Many students whom a teacher brands with zeroes already see themselves as failures.  They’re likely to experience his insistence that they be “held accountable” as yet another dose of humiliation and punishment.  (And it’s the students’ perception, not the teacher’s intention, that determines the result.)  The idea that another goose egg will snap them out of their cycle of failure and put them on the road to success is, to put it gently, naïve.

I personally know that spiral of failure all too well. I don’t think it makes for the best learning environment.

∞

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It's About Who We Teach

There is no magic bullet for education.  There is no enchanted cure-all or one-stop shop that's going to fix most of the ills in our schools today.

That's not to say we shouldn't try.  We have a great responsibility as educators and parents.  We have an obligation to grow and learn and fail and try and grow and learn and fail some more.  We should use all the best tools available to help our students as much as possible.

But no computer software is ever going to save education.  No new framework or model will ever truly revolutionize our schools.   No language arts program is ever going to fix the way all kids learn to read.  We're never going to figure it all out.

Because the thing is, education is not what's really broken. It's the people who are broken.  And there's always going to be people.  That's why it can never be as much about how we teach or what we teach.  It has to be about who we teach.

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On Losing Ctrl

"Each time I sit down to write I don't know if I can do it. The flow of writing is always a surprise and a challenge. Click the computer on and I am 17 again, wanting to write and not knowing if I can."   -Don Murray

[So, I've kinda been in a blogging slump lately.  I don't really know what the deal is.  I just keep finding excuses not to write.  I haven't been writing in my journal or on 750 Words either.  But I'm going to take the advice that I give all of my young writers- write.  Yes, it is stupidly simplistic.  Yes, it frustrates many of my students.  I still hold by it though.  Write.  Write when you have something to say, write when you have nothing to say.  Write when you can.  And, maybe even more importantly, write when you can't.  Slow claps to Edna Sackson (@whatedsaid) for getting me off my duff and getting my keyboard clicking.]

"Put your hands at your side, and get in that LINE!"

I heard that shouted many times on the episodes of Beyond Scared Straight I've recently been watching on Netflix.  The show is pretty much what I thought it was going to be- plenty of yelling, threats, and scared kids.  Inmates on the show are trying to use fear and intimidation to motivate teens to stay out of prison.  What I didn't expect, was it to remind me so much of school.  Seriously.  There are many things that are eerily similar in both institutions.

This got me thinking about control.  My need for it.  Safety's dependency on it.  People's resentment of it being taken.  It seemed to be one of the biggest concerns at the prisons.  My thoughts, as usual, rounded back to school.

How much control do I have in my classroom?  How much do I need?  What's up for grabs and what's not?  What's up to the students and what's up to me?  Control can be a good thing depending on the ways we get it, and for what purpose we want it.  Learners have to have a sense of control when they learn, don't they?

Quiet In The Halls

I'll admit, I fuss at kids in the hallway.  Not exactly the same way they do in prisons, but we're trying for similar goals.  My school has almost 700 kids.  There have to be some procedures for respectful behavior in the hall.  We quietly walk single-file on the right side of the hall with our hands at our side.  We do it out of respect for the other classrooms.  That's a good kind of control to me.  Eventually the students internalize why we do it, and it is no longer controlling.  Inmates... I'm not so sure.

Order (VS., and /or) Control

I wonder what else I try to control for my students beside hallway walking.  I feel I do need to control some things.  I'm the responsible adult in the room.  It's my responsibility to be in control.  I just need to make sure I'm trying to be in control of the right things.

I've realized many of the things I want to control are for the sake of order.  Order as opposed to chaos.  My room can get chaotic at times, but I never want chaos.  Safety, both physical and emotional, is another area that I feel I must step in and exercise control.  It would be irresponsible to completely leave safety up to nine and ten-year-olds.  This again all goes to the greater purpose of learning.  I don't assume control by coercive or threatening means.  No cloaks.  No daggers.  Just trust.  I feel this is good and acceptable.

Mediums, Methods, and Materials

This is the big area where I have to let go.  I cannot be totally in control of student learning.  If we were in total control, then that would give us total responsibility, thus negating responsibility to the students who are supposed to be doing the learning.

I know I want to keep getting better at this.  I think about how cool it would be to have students constantly choosing their own mediums and methods to learn.  What if I let them pick how they wanted to demonstrate their newly learned knowledge and skills?  That's the kind of control I don't want.  That's the kind of control our students need.

Exactly how much control is too much control?  I have no idea.  But I do know that if it's not a safety or order issue, I'm going to be dialing my control way back this year.  Way back.

Photo credit: joelogon

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Pedagogical PEZ Dispensers

I have a wife.  She teaches high school.  She's great.  We talk about education.  A lot.  She's teaching summer school.

This afternoon she told me that she talked with her summer class about using their independent time wisely.  She actually gives her students independent work time.  I told you she's great.  She asked me if kindergarteners were able to stay focused and do their work during center time.  I used to teach kindergarteners.

"Sure, for the most part," I said.  "But you have to train them.  Fourth-graders can do it too.  But again, the training."  I teach fourth-graders now.

"Well that's what I told my class.  And they're doing pretty well.  They're just not used to getting independent work time," she said.

I asked her why.  She said that many high school teachers don't want to use valuable "teaching time" to let their students work by themselves on things.  There is lots of pressure to get through everything.  She explained that since they only have the students for a short period each day, many teachers shift into lecture mode.  We thought the shift began to happen in middle school when teachers saw the students for less time each day.

That struck me as so incredibly sad.  Class time = teaching time?  Double sad when that is motivated by fear.  Shifting into lecture mode may feel like good teaching, but I doubt it's good learning.  It reduces teachers to pedagogical PEZ dispensers, shooting out non-nutritive rectangles of sugar and apathy.

I thought they should turn time on its head.  Instead of thinking of it as teaching time, what if they thought of it as learning time?  A steady diet of PEZ can't be good for anyone.  Where is our focus?  Teaching time or learning time?

Photo: bobafred

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An Insidious Step Ladder

We teach kids for the now.

Sure, we must prepare them for what will be coming up in their lives.  I know that knowledge builds upon knowledge and all that.  But, I'm talking about the idea that students must learn for themselves in the now.  Like right now.

John Spencer wrote a short, sobering post a few days ago that riled up an itch in me that I haven't been able to scratch yet.  <buttkissing>If you're not familiar with John's writing, please go check him out.  He's great.  Really.</buttkissing>

His post made me think about how often we throw around the idea of the "real world" in learning.  We want to write real world examples into our lesson plans and have our students solve real world problems.  We want to prepare our students for the real world.  The funny thing is, the classroom is the real world.  We are in it right now, and so are our students.

We can't only teach them things to use in the real world future tense.  We must teach them things to use in the real world present tense.  We are the real world.  This is the real world.

Like I said in my comment on his post, I hate when teachers say "We're doing this because you'll need it next year."  If they need it next year, then shouldn't they learn it next year?  I hope that learning can be for learning's sake here in the moment.

What do our students need to know now?  Right now.  What has their interest?  What has hooks in them?  Let's start with that.

School is not some insidious step ladder that kids climb one rung at a time, hoping to get to the top as quickly as possible for some vast landscape of knowledge and skills that they can finally use.  The real world is not the top of the ladder.  The real world is the ladder.  Our classrooms get to be in every inch of every rung.

School is the real world.  And school is now.

Photo: Dave Dugdale

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