Failure and Trust

My first post was about the need for failure in the process of learning.  It was also my very first attempt at blogging and sharing my thoughts digitally.  I want to follow my failure to where it intersects with trust.

As I thought about my own schooling and my new digital learning, I was struck over and over again by the seeming lack of fear that I experienced in my learning failures.  Swimming lessons aside, I rarely shied away from a challenge and seemed to intuitively seek out the aid of others who could help me.  Please don’t think that I did not experience frustration.  It was always there and tears were usually close behind, but it never stopped me for long.  Why not?  Why do I have students who cannot get beyond the frustration or the failure to the amazing learning that results?

I believe that a fear of failure, or looking ‘stupid’, paired with a lack of trust is what holds so many of us back.  Do we trust in our abilities?  Do we trust the teacher to be there or will there be a crisis that calls him/her away just when I need them most?  Do we trust the classroom community to understand our confusion or frustration?  Most importantly, do the teacher and my classmates trust me to learn from the failure?

The last question can be asked by teachers, administrators, parents, student, and ministries.  Do the stakeholders of education trust that each one will learn from mistakes?  

As I searched for 21^st Century Education topic this week, I was distracted again by technology.  As I looked for 21^st Century skills, many of them focused on using the Internet and social media as a means of engaging and collaborating.   I came across the article Teaching in a Participatory Digital World by Michele Jacobsen (2010).  Throughout the article two ideas kept jumping into view:  ENGAGED TEACHERS and TRUST. 

Before reading on, have a listen to Dan Ariely as he talks about What makes us feel good about our work.  It has implications for engaging teachers in 21st Century Pedagogy.

Jacobsen (2010) calls for teachers to be engaged with professional development and the design of 21^st century engaging lessons.  Technology is the tool and the teacher’s own opportunities, passions and learning are the engagement (for teachers).  This is the first article I have read that begins to look at the engagement of teachers in the equation for engaging students.  If you consider teacher engagement in the context of Professional Learning Communities, I wonder what the average level of teacher engagement is.  

Trust, this is the one element that must be there.  Teachers need to work at gaining the trust of their students, but they must also trust that the students will use technological tools appropriately.  Administrators need to trust teachers and allow failure as teachers grapple with the emerging pedagogy of 21^st century learning.  They must also trust in the path of passion and learning that a teacher chooses.  In this way they can support the engagement of teachers and then the development of engaging lessons for students.  Jacobsen (2010) calls for educators to have “ . . .unrestricted and unfiltered access to online communities and resources using reliable, mobile and powerful devices and networks.”  She places the responsibility for the design and maintenance of school networks in the hands of school jurisdictions and calls for trust to be given to principals teachers and students to think critically and ethically when using the Internet without filters and firewalls.

The idea that I would allow my students unfiltered access is absolutely terrifying.  But . . .   If we do not engage them in learning that reflects the true nature of the decisions and consequences of the world around, then how can we expect them to understand the need for protocols, for privacy, for critically choosing what to post on Facebook and who to follow on Twitter?  Society is just now beginning to build policies, rules and legal laws to deal with digital information and social networking.  I think it would be empowering and democratic to have the very people that will be bound by them, our current students, help to negotiate them.  What do you think?

Alberta Education. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://education.alberta.ca/teachers/aisi/themes/21-century.aspx

Jacobsen, M. (2010). Teaching in a participatory digital world. Retrieved May 6, 2013, from CEA: http://www.cea-ace.ca/education-canada/article/teaching-participatory-digital-world

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Beginning with Failure

"Take a deep breath and jump, or there will never be another swimming lesson."  Words spoken by a frustrated father to his 7 year old daughter.  This poor father had paid for the beginning level swim lessons twice the summer before.  This would be his daughter's third attempt to pass the dreaded "tread water for 30 seconds" test.  In her defence, it wasn't the treading that caused the dreading; it was the 12 feet of space between the top of the water and the floor of the pool.  Did she pass?  Yes.  Did she go on to be an olympic swimmer or a life saving life guard?  No.  But she swims.  Her technique may not be graceful or powerful, but it is enough that she has explored lakes in Texas, rivers in Alberta, oceans (Pacific, Atlantic), and seas (Carribean, Mediteranean, Red).  This frightened little girl has even jumped off the side of a boat to snorkel off the coast of Florida.

For me, every new beginning holds an element of fear.  It usually takes me a while to figure out what it is.  Even as the little girl above, I was not convinced that I was capable, but the fear of disappointing my father was greater than the fear of all that water beneath me.  This blog is a new beginning and it is part of parcel that comes in a university course called Innovative Curriculum and Assessment.  Like my father, Susan Drake is pushing me to step beyond the fear of failure and move into the 21st century. 

Blogging, tweeting, creating google docs (This I have done before.) are requirements for class participation.  I have colleagues who have been  trying to get me to explore more, but it takes more than that to push me past the fear of looking foolish.  For me to step out past the possibility of failure, it takes the fear of disappointing myself and those closest to me.  In this case, it is my husband, who has shown confidence in my ability to complete an M.Ed. degree and who is helping to provide the financial means to make it happen.

As a teacher, I have been struggling with the balance between innovative practices, standards based curriculum and assessment, and the mixed messages coming from the school board and the ministry.  Wednesday, April 24, 2013, the first class of Innovative Curriculum and Assessment, was the first time I felt energized and moved enough to push myself into the 21st century and to say "ENOUGH!"  The syllabus asked us to be open to failure.  Truly, can you imagine.  It was vague, open ended, and required class participants to co-create lesson goals and criteria.  I could hardly believe that it was a univeristy class.  Finally, I was participating in the design of my own learning. 

Student constructed success criteria is one of the current  professional development plans for the school board I am with.  It sounds wonderful, but I have not been experiencing success.  In fact, I would say that many of the criteria my students and I have created have been utter failures.  Why?  After last Wednesday, I believe it is because I am not simply asking them to help me design the assessment, but I am not including them in the decisions about what will be assessed.  They are not participating in the design of their own learning.  That is still being forced upon them by me.  This has been the part that frustrates me.  How do I get away from this?

A first step is to stay in Susan's class.  I left scared to death -- me blogging and tweeting -- yet energized and excited.  I teach the arts K-8 and cover a few other subjects for colleagues.  Thursday, I entered the grade 3 media studies class singing.  I know, so what?  I was singing and humming in excitement for the possibilities, in the knowledge that I didn't have any answers, in the fact that my plans for this lesson looked alien to what I had done before, and in joy that I would be constructing the actual learning with my students.

I am not sure how to close the blog other than to say, please accept that it is a work in progress.  I have included a link to a blog from the Canadian Education Association blog site.  It speaks to the idea of learning through failure and the seeking out of failure to learn.  Please let me know what you think.  It resonated with me because, as a teacher, I should be seeking failure out more often instead of trying to avoid or prevent it.

Mixed Martial Arts and Life Long Learning
http://www.cea-ace.ca/blog/brooke-moore/2013/04/1/mixed-martial-arts-and-life-long-learning

Okay, here is one of the many failures I am and will experience as I try to learn how to blog.  I am not currently able to create a successful link that you can just click on.  I hope that you will take the time to copy and paste the address into your brouser.  This is an article well worth the read.