I was initially drawn towards the topic of failure not only as a graduate student, but also as a relatively new undergraduate teacher that frequently encounters failure in the classroom. Halfway through the article by Carr (In Support of Failure), I had an Ah-Ha moment. The author describes how we can re-conceptualize failure to include not only the personal realm, but also to consider the sociocultural context in which the failure occurs. Students may be either “held back” or placed in “remedial” classes to compensate for their lack of understanding of course material. The personal failures of the student are punished by segregating them into another classroom, distant from his/her peer group. I agree that we should consider the sociocultural context of the failure, but we should also seek to examine whether the nature of the undergraduate classroom (specifically) can transform how students and we (as educators) understand and communicate our failures.
I recently handed back graded papers, in which most of the class scored around the C-range. Immediately after handing back the paper one of my student’s hands shot up. She wondered what the class average was. When I answered her questions with, “a C average” I could sense the release of tension in a room. Students frequently use social comparisons to determine the “degree” of their failures within the classroom. It seems that the sense of shame that Carr later discusses can be transformed into a group-shame dynamic in college that often lightens the burden of experiencing this heavy emotion. As teachers, we may give students the class grade distributions and consequently, we may be encouraging students to accept their failures in relation to their peers. Will this transformation of shame and the subsequent movement towards students’ acceptance of their failures lead to a classroom full of unmotivated/lazy students? If we are to encourage students to accept failure (as Carr suggests), this paradigm shift must permeate beyond my classroom and into an entire campus for it to be effective. I also wondered whether there were differences in “failure acceptance” across the CUNY campuses. Are some of our campuses promoting the acceptance of failure? If so, how are they doing it effectively without creating an underachieving student body?
Turning more inward, Carr also talks about giving ourselves permission to experience failure “on its own terms,” and many of the articles in the Journal of IT & P illustrate personal reflections from educators on failures they’ve had within the classroom. We’ve been taught to feel shameful of our behaviors, but why don’t we as educators discuss our failures in an effort to learn from each other? I’ve noticed that student teachers do this frequently through informal conversations in the hallways, but we don’t publicly discuss these failures. I’m not advocating for teachers to publicize all of their classroom failures, but I’d love to learn from the successes and failures of other educators. How do we get far enough past the shame associated with failure to discuss our personal classroom failures with other teachers?
I think that the amount of time you have been teaching really does make a difference in terms of being able to admit failure in a somewhat public way. I feel very comfortable talking with other students in my department about lessons that absolutely did not go as planned and asking advice when I’m not sure how to handle things. I’m much more reticent to bring those things up in front of my department head, my work colleagues, or even my own professors.
It seems really strange for me to admit that, because in my artistic life I am all about failure. When I work as a dramaturg the process in iterative, I go through draft, after draft, after draft with the playwrights I am working with. None of the drafts are “failures,” there are just ways to get to where we are ultimately going. Sometimes the art is bad and you say, “Okay, well, this is terrible. Let’s try that.” I’m not sure why that is so hard to embrace in my life as a teacher. What occurs to me though is that the stakes seem higher in admitting failure as a new teacher, because there is this fear that failing=bad teaching and bad teachers don’t get jobs.
Christina, after reading your post and Carr’s article I started to think about how the concept of failure applies in my classes and in my professional life. At the high school where I teach, we definitely discuss the successes and failures that take place in our classes. Moreover, we are encouraged to visit each other’s classes to learn from and with each other. However, we have all been working together for a while, have friendly relationships and feel pretty safe that these failures won’t be held against us.
On the other hand, when working with my pre-service elementary teachers, I have noticed that many of my students are very afraid of failure, and do not accept the possibility that they have done anything wrong. After they student taught for the very first time, they were supposed to write a reflection based on their experience. I specifically asked them to focus on the negative aspect of their lesson. I wanted them to write about what went wrong, or what could be improved and how, etc. We even talked about possible things that they could focus on at their debriefing after the class. To my surprise, 90 percent of my students wrote how the lesson could not go any better, and they would not change a thing. This was their first time out and they all had much room for improvement. I had simply hoped that this would be a great opportunity to exchange feedback and for the students to begin to learn to self-reflect. I was astounded.
Carr’s article opened up a different point of view for me. Are we creating students who are so afraid to fail, that they simply refuse to see any flaws in their performances? If so, will these same students risk being creative or thinking outside of the box with said fear? The greatest lessons I’ve had in my life have come from some of my biggest failures, and, being able to face them and learn from them. Where would I be if I too was so fearful that I shut my eyes to my flaws? The question now that I would like to answer the most is how can I as an educator of educators break this ingrained habit, and help open the eyes of my students to beauty of learning from our mistakes.