Читать книгу Tech Like a PIRATE - Matt Miller - Страница 13

As we’ve seen, we can make better decisions if we’re clear on our definitions. We just used the word fail. We asked, What happens if it fails? So let’s define what we mean by failure here. Let’s say that failure is when we try something new and it doesn’t achieve the results we expect. It fails to meet our goals. Failure doesn’t sound so scary when we define it, does it?

What if we do fail when we take risks? What if we try and just don’t get the results we want?

A few things happen:

1 We probably aren’t any worse off than when we were sticking with “safe teaching.” What you were doing before wasn’t getting results, either. That’s the whole reason you went through that four-step thought process above in the first place!

2 When we see failure as a dead end, it’s crippling. We can’t see it that way, though. We must see failure as a way forward. That makes it empowering. Use the word FAIL as an acronym: first attempt in learning.

3 Failure lets us make progress the way a scientist does. When scientists study something, they hypothesize their idea and test it out. If it’s a success, they use those results to move forward and strategize. If it’s a failure, they analyze the results to improve for the next time. We can view ourselves as teacher-scientists: either we’ll succeed or we’ll learn how we can improve.

Your failures aren’t really failures. They’re data. Your failures are data. And you can use that data to do better in the future. A good scientist wouldn’t scrap valuable data by giving up! Avoid saying to yourself, “I’ll never do that again.” Instead, let’s just add a couple of words. Instead, say, “I’ll never do it that way again.” Thinking “never again” is a dead end. It stops us in our tracks. “Never that way again” is empowering. It provides a way forward.

We identify what’s ineffective in our classroom. We try something new that has tremendous potential. Our failures aren’t really failures if we learn something from them. Our successes are leaps and bounds better than the “tried and true,” ordinary way of doing things. And we’ve created a class that students want to come to, where we have their rapt attention and they’re engaged.

Does this “risky” teaching sound risky after all? Taking some risks in our teaching is actually one of the safest things we can do.