When Failure Is an Option
Reframing failure as a learning experience
“Failure is not an option,” a student wrote on her goal setting worksheet this semester.
This was a response to the question “What obstacles may you encounter when pursuing your goal?”
I know what she was wanting to say, but I kept thinking “Failure most certainly is an option.” It wasn’t like she would implode on site if she didn’t earn the grade she wanted, at least not physically.
In fact, I knew that she had experienced a few setbacks in the past few semesters. And yet she was still here doing things differently and moving forward. She was succeeding despite past failures. But had she actively learned from them?
What I was concerned about was her mindset: Was she focused on the wrong thing? Was she focused on “not failing” instead of learning, growing, improving?
I think we too often try to keep students from failing. Many of my first-year college students admit they were “kept” from failing (and learning from those errors, I would add) in high school because they got extra extensions and unlimited “do-overs” to improve their grades. While I embrace giving opportunities to students to revise, correct, and learn from a first attempt, I also think we often allow students to glide right over the necessary reflection it takes to make failure truly instructive.
Now they sit in my class without prior experience with learning from their mistakes or at least really digging in to do things differently. And some just want “the points” without understanding the purpose of the assignment or without much effort. Not all of my students—just enough for me to contemplate what to do differently.
I am not advocating that we fail students—or make work unnecessarily hard—to “teach them a lesson.” Instead, I am arguing that we need to prepare students to expect setbacks, obstacles, challenges (and confusion, ambiguity, and a little chaos), to build these experiences into their learning, and then encourage them to use the information (or “data; it’s just data,” I often say when handing back graded tests) to make changes.
What can we do to help students embrace the power of failing? Here are some strategies with students:
Ask students to reflect on a challenging lesson. “Describe a time when you learned something difficult and initially failed at it before succeeding. What was it? How did you use setbacks or failing to make changes to your approach? What advice would you give someone in the same circumstance?” Allowing students to reflect on a past learning challenge can help prime them for future ones by reminding them of their ability to handle setbacks.
Teach students what learning is. I have used Rita Smilkstein’s work on the “Natural Learning Process” as a start. She refers to “trial and error” in the early stages, but I would suggest that failure can happen especially when you have “mastered” something. It is how we use that failure that makes the difference. I also like to share this video as an example of what learning in real time looks like it. The skateboarder in the video repeatedly falls, but gets up and tries until it “clicks” with him as to what he needs to do differently. Learning is essentially experimentation and we have forgotten that many experiments fail until they succeed.
Build in a revision or a “do over” into your assignment. Take any challenging assignment and build in a revision or retest opportunity, but require that students review their prior work, demonstrate understanding of the shortcomings and feedback, plan their “do over,” and point out their improvements. Redos without reflections can miss the point of the process.
Assign students a “failure reflection” on challenging assignments. In my student success class, I consider the reflection to be more valuable than the actual product. For example, if students are learning how to study for a college mid-term exam, I give them a test reflection that asks them how they studied, how they felt taking the test, and how they felt about their performance. The exam grade is not as important to their overall progress in the course as much as the test reflection (and other reflections) are.
Make failing fun. This one may be hard to do, but there are many activities in which the failing is baked into the process. The Marshmallow Challenge is a perfect activity for helping students enjoy the process of failing…or at least making it seem less intimidating. You can also create tongue-in-cheek certificates for students who failed at parts of this challenge.
Create a “failure” wall. Allow students to anonymously share their past failures in a public setting. This could be through technology in which students can share on a document what they failed at, or it can be in the hallway of a building where students can write on designated paper their failures. We do this during our “Fail Forward Week” in which we celebrate failing—and learning from those mistakes—with “Fail Boards” around campus. Students can share their failure to help normalize the experience.
Finally, in addition to its being part of the learning process, remind students that failure is normal—everyone has failed—and temporary. It is not a permanent state that you cannot move out of no matter how deep the hole. For the student who said “Failure is not an option,” she has been proving that a setback such as a low GPA is not going to keep her from continually improving.