In his TEDX Talk, Clint Tuttle talked about the importance of failure. As a college professor, he spoke of many students that would come to his office upset because they thought they were failing his class. When Tuttle looked at their grade, he would be surprised to see they had an A or B. To these students, a 98% didn’t mean getting 98% of the material correct—it meant getting 2% of the material wrong. This TEDX Talk resonated with me because I have the exact same perfectionist mindset when it comes to my own achievements. When success is all that is talked about, and you don’t achieve it, you feel like you are doing something wrong. Failure is the elephant in the room that nobody wants to talk about.
The idea that failure is taboo isn’t new. However, in his talk, Tuttle pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about before. Students aren’t the only ones that fear failure. Teachers do to. With a near impossible list of standards and expectations teachers are supposed to meet, many fall into routine, by the book teaching. They are scared to innovate, because it means putting their job on the line if they fail. This reaffirmed the fears I shared in my last blog post about why the necessary innovation isn’t happening in schools.
His ultimate message is that failing is an option, and we shouldn’t be afraid of it. To the students—failure is incremental. One bad grade is not the be all end all to your future. In fact, it is those incremental failures are what lead to success. To the teachers—allow your students to fail. This does not mean to let them slack off. Just let them know that failure is unavoidable. What matters is how you react to it, and whether or not you take the time to learn from it.
As a student and a teacher, this was a great reminder for me. I have spent my entire life deathly afraid of failure. I think these types of conversations are so important to have, because no one talks about them. I want to teach my students that failure is normal. I want to teach them how to react when they fail, so that they can use that experience to learn.
Stressed, Blessed, and Coffee Obsessed 
I used to work at a school where our motto was, “Failure is Not an Option.” I always disliked this stance, as I believe that some of our best lessons are learned when we fail to achieve something and have to persevere to meet our goals.
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I agree wholeheartedly! If we are truly preparing kids for the real world, teaching them how to fail and that failure is inevitable is so important.
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I know what you mean about teachers feeling like failures. We have state testing coming up and I am so worried I have not done enough to make sure my students are prepared. All it feels like the teachers are doing lately is preparing students for state testing.
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It is unfortunate that so much time, effort, and stress have to be put into state tests. A lot of that energy could be used elsewhere. Good luck with the tests! I’m sure you’ve done a great job preparing your students.
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It’s sad that teachers are fearful of losing their jobs if the try to innovate and fail. They should be encouraged to teach new things in order to help their students. In real life, everybody fails at some point. We need to make sure our students know this can happen, and that it’s ok. I have to realize that getting a bad grade is ok, and not stress so much about it. Thanks for reminding me of that.
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My dream is to end up working in a school with a principal that supports my desire to innovate. I know they are rare, but they do exist! And that support makes all the difference.
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