Cycle One: Interpretations of the Meaning and Causes of Failure

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Plain and simple, failure is the secret to success.

I will first refer to my experiences as a parent. My son once developed a secret code and used it to write, “You are evil” about a teacher assistant with whom he had had a bad experience. It earned him his first, and so far only, trip to the office. While I stood there, fuming mind you, I listened to the counselor tell him that he should not hold a grudge or be angry with anyone. When I got him home, I told him to throw that hooey out the window. I told him that it was a necessary part of life to hold grudges and to be angry. How on Earth can he be expected to know what forgiveness and moving on are if he doesn’t know what leads up to them? And what about happiness and peace? How can he truly bask in them if he doesn’t understand what the alternative is? It’s the same with success? Do you know what success is just because someone tells you that you are a successful individual? No. Success comes from knowing that a time or two before, you experienced failure.

And so it happens in our classrooms to us as teachers as much as to our students.

As a fourth grade teacher, by the time a student walks through my door, there could be a long list of failures. It becomes a daunting task to encourage a student toward success. I certainly would not want a student walking away, into yet another school year, with more self-esteem issues than what s/he came into my classroom with at the beginning of the school year. Our school counselor attempted to address this through a variety of approaches including a mentor program and a Fill the Bucket program. My principal also implemented a “Kids for Character” pledge that was recited every morning after the national anthem, and a Pillars of Character program. I was not in the classroom this year and therefore do not have a full understanding of how the Pillars of Character was implemented, but I do know that it was applied more as a campus-wide discipline plan rather than what Paul Tough describes as what occurred at KIPP. Those “Spotted” cards are more like the previously mentioned Fill the Bucket. I took the time to fill student buckets by writing little notes like, “Congratulations on being class valedictorian,” or “Thank you to Mr. G’s class for teaching me how to multiply using the Lattice Method.” IDEA Public Schools: College Academy where I live uses a similar process once or twice a year in which students write their name at the top of a sheet of paper, pass it around the classroom, and every other student must write a positive comment about every other student in the room. So, after days, weeks, months, or even years of failure, a student is finally reading anywhere from 20-30 positive comments about themselves. Maybe there is an insight that another student can provide which will allow that fearful student to overcome any one or more of the fears that Palmer discussed. This is a practice that I can see using to move several students beyond their fears and internalized failures at once. The Fill the Bucket I think is an excellent approach for those days when there is a danger of that one student not making any forward progress, from teacher to student, but I can see having a “suggestion box” type set-up where students can fill each other’s buckets, too.

I like these suggestions about how to bring students out of the failure of fear funk. Positive ways to address the issue.

On the other hand, McDermott’s closing statement, “…we must protect ourselves constantly against accepting our culture’s own definition of its problem and student instead the problems of the people…” floored me. I just submitted a reflection for another MATC course in which I indicated that I am the students I teach because I’m of the same “diverse group” that they are. That, in fact, couldn’t be further from the truth. I am Hispanic. I was poor growing up, and from the age of fifteen, I lived in a single-parent home and that allows me to identify with them to some extent. However, I am not an immigrant and I was never faced with having to learn a new language because I grew up bi-lingual. Have I been a detriment to my students because I thought I knew them?

Using Ogbu’s (p.290) definition of an involuntary minority, I recall a student who had been in our public school system since Pre-Kindergarten, but had not acquired the English language. She fought it with every fiber of her being. That school year I had an even-split student population: half English instruction, half Spanish instruction. I remember Norma physically turning her back to me when I began my English instruction.  Whether “consciously and/or unconsciously (she worked to) avoid crossing cultural and language boundaries” (Ogbu, p.291). And just like with Palmer’s “Student From Hell,” I focused on her deliberate refusal to progress in English. It was a very real fear for me because as a fourth grader, it was expected that Norma would make enough gains in her use of English to exit the bi-lingual program. I was failing to even engage her in her own progress.

To close out this post with what seems like a complete disconnect to rest, I thoroughly enjoyed “Good Video Games and Good Learning,” mostly because it provided an entirely new perspective about video games. I am far from being their number one fan as a result, but I never would have connected the higher-order thinking skills that they involve and certainly never would have thought of them as a feel-good, risk-taking environment. I have presented turn-around trainings for our teachers and on more than one occasion I have touted the importance of providing a safe classroom environment in which our students can take English acquisition risks. Should I return to the classroom, I will certainly refer to Gee’s points in order to provide my students with authentic connections between academics and their home lives.