Re-branding Failure

I have been involved with a couple of conversations over the last few weeks about how to encourage people (both students and teachers) to be less risk adverse and try out things that might work and might not.

The question has been posed as:  How do we help people be more comfortable with failure?  My response has been formulating over at least a year and a half, but I think the answer is something along these lines:  The types of "failures" that we are talking about are not failures, that is a misnomer.  They are movements along a path of learning.  They are shifts, direction changes, do-overs and explorations.

Related to this is the concept of shared goals.  If my goal is that every student in my class get a 100% on an exam, then perhaps I will fail.  But if my goal is that every student learn and demonstrate that learning in a meaningful way to them, then if it doesn't work at first, we can keep trying, we can change course, we can work together to learn from what went well and what didn't.  If, as a teacher, I re-think testing and allow it to be a formative STEP in the road to understanding, and share that with my students, then a lower percentage point on that test just means, back to the drawing board, not failure.  (The question of tests as appropriate assessments is looming here, I know-- I just can't take it all on at once.)

And this focus on testing and demonstration, of course, comes to grades.

"Does this count?" "Are we being graded?" "When is the test?" 

If we continue to use grades as a standard measurement of knowledge obtained, based on traditional assessments, are we making it even harder to help people redefine failure, and thus, be more comfortable taking risks as teachers and students? As teachers, no matter how innovative we are about helping students take ownership of the process of learning in a way that makes it meaningful to them, at the end of the day there is a letter assigned to that process.  And that letter has a meaning to them.  In some cases it is as simple as this: A= success A- and below= failure.  Ugh!! Since this feels overwhelming to me, I am going to start small. Today I am going to talk with my students about a lesson plan that may not have worked for everyone.  Then, based on their feedback,  I am going to move on and try the next one.  Not a failure, but a step on the long road to understanding.

This video was assigned as "homework" for a meeting that I have today.  I love my job.