ELLEN
BERG
Diary #23
Failure Can Sometimes Be the Best Lesson
We celebrated my brother Scott's birthday last night at my parents' house. After dinner my brother, who is a political science professor, described his approach to his classes. I was struck by how important it is to him for his students to learn not only the content, but also personal responsibility. He has several structures in place to hold students accountable, but he also has a variety of supports available to scaffold the learning for any student who needs it. As he puts it, "You have to want to fail to fail my class."
He told me the story of one of his students who was caught in a lie. Scott's policy with exams is that if a student is going to miss the exam the student must contact him before the exam or soon after with a valid excuse. The student may not make up the exam, but has to write a lengthy paper instead, something which encourages his students to make every effort to be in attendance and cuts down on cheating. One student told Scott that he was in the hospital at the time and provided him with a note. Scott never looks all that carefully at the excuses, figuring the paper is deterrent enough. But this time he noticed that the name of the county hospital was misspelled. He had his assistant call the hospital to verify and found out the student was never there. The consequence was writing the paper to receive a 59% or taking a zero. Scott's comment was, "If nothing else, I want my students to develop a sense of personal responsibility. Sometimes the best thing is for them to fail."I'm having the same thought
I found the timing of this conversation funny because I had just arrived at that conclusion myself this week. We have spent the last two weeks on a revised version of my fairy tale project. In the past I have had jigsaw groups read different fairy tales, decide what all the fairy tales have in common, and create a poster with the characteristics of their tales and their own definition of a fairy tale. This year I had students work in pairs to do the same thing using PowerPoint to present their findings. I provided a day-to-day schedule in advance and reviewed the schedule daily to help students stay on track.
Overall, my students loved the project, and the schedule helped them stay on track. Many students asked to work in my room during lunch or academic lab to catch up, and I was impressed by the effort they were putting forth. There are always a few, however, who waste time. I talked with off-task students repeatedly, pointing out what they had completed and remained to be done. Some responded, some did not. On Thursday my first two classes of students gave their presentations to the class. Some presentations were brilliant, beyond what I have seen in the past. It seemed the use of computers and the structured pacing of the schedule pushed my students up a notch. Unfortunately, there were also a handful of presentations in each class that were awful, incomplete, and not at all what I was looking for.Suffering the consequences
Students had begged me for more time. I had given each class one extra day, as I observed even my hardworking students were not quite finished. Though some students still were not finished on the new presentation day, I decided to let them suffer the consequences of their off-task behavior.
It was difficult for me. I am not accustomed to letting students fail. After presentations I had students complete a three-question reflection: 1. What did you learn from this assignment?2. What was the best part of this assignment?
3. What was the most difficult part of this assignment? I fully expected to read a lot of negative feedback from the students who had failed the assignment—albeit by their own hands. I was shocked by their responses (some are by students who succeeded):
What I learned about the slide show is that you do what the assignment says to do and you will get a good grade. The difficult thing is that we missed a lot of things and we got a bad grade. But I will learn from my mistake. –Shane Never play when we have to work. –Monique I learned that when you work together and use your time wisely you get a good grade. –Jasmine Show the teacher your outline before you do it. Work together. –Marta Come to school and work harder. –Marky I learned to do your work. –Nathan I learned that next time get a different partner. –Don (He worked, his partner did not.)After reading my students' reflections I felt better about their failures. They may not have an understanding of a fairy tale (not my goal in the first place) and their grades may be lower, but if these students gained an appreciation for the importance of focusing on their work, following directions, and staying on task, they have learned a valuable, time-worthy lesson. Sometimes the best lesson is to allow your students to fail.Never to mistreat or talk about anyone because I might need them. –Sherry
I learned do what you can while there is time. Always work with your partner do not play. –Rick
Never work with Rick again. Stay focused no matter what. –Dan
