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.
