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<\/p>\nGrowing up, we often heard the expression “Failure is not an option.”<\/p>\n
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I recently attended a seminar in which the speaker, distinguished standards-based grading advocate\u00a0Rick Wormeli<\/a>, said that he wishes schools would move away from this expression – stating that students see failure as something bad, something to be avoided.<\/p>\n Wormeli advised rethinking the idea of failure, stating, rather, that to F.A.I.L. signifies F<\/strong><\/span><\/span>irst A<\/u><\/b><\/span>ttempt I<\/u><\/b><\/span>n L<\/u><\/b><\/span>earning.<\/p>\n Having heard this acronym in the past, and already being a fan, I paused to reflect on the original failure motto.<\/p>\n Famously (yet erroneously) attributed to\u00a0Gene Kranz, flight director of Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle missions, I always interpreted the quote to mean that you can\u00b4t, nor should you, stop when you fail. Failure is not only an option, it is the way to success.\u00a0 If the people involved in trying to bring Apollo 13 home had failed, then the mission would have ended.\u00a0 Instead, they kept troubleshooting, kept failing, until they succeeded.<\/p>\n Wormeli went on to share our first attempts and how failing actually pushes us forward.<\/p>\n Ultimately, students who take ownership of their learning, also take responsibility for how and what they learn.\u00a0 Gone are the days where you are expected to \u00a8fill your bucket with knowledge\u00a8”- it\u00b4s as\u00a0William Butler Yeats said, \u00a8Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.\u00a8<\/p>\n <\/p>\n And YOU must be the one who lights the fire.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n If you wait for your parents, your teachers, your friends, etc. to fill the pail or light the fire, then you are being PASSIVE in your role as a learner – and there is no greater travesty.<\/p>\n Students should fail and fail often.\u00a0 It is only by picking oneself up and trying again until you are successful, that you truly master whatever it is you are trying to learn.<\/p>\n Dr. Tae, physicist and skateboarding champion, shares<\/a> how applying the same principles of learning how to skateboard, to school, can actually help students find more success from failure.<\/p>\n To read more on the topic, check out Fahkry\u015b article,\u00a0\u00a0This is Why Failure is Not an Option, But a Prerequisite for Success.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Growing up, we often heard the expression “Failure is not an option.” I recently attended a seminar in which the speaker, distinguished standards-based grading advocate\u00a0Rick…<\/p>\n![\"Image](\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/51ghwBqsv3L._SX376_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg\")
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