In life, everybody fails at things in many ways. Failure must be seen as an opportunity for growth. Just think of some of these famous failures:
JK Rowling’s manuscript for Harry
Thomas Edison’s teacher told him
Potter was turned down by 30
he was too stupid to learn anything
different publishers.
at school.
Bill Gates was a Harvard dropout.
Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for having no
Dr Seuss was rejected by 27 publishers.
Michael Jordan was cut from
imagination and no original ideas.
his high school team and went
Steve Jobs, at age 30, was sacked
home to his room to cry.
from the company he founded. Failure is not ideal; it is not what the students might have strived for but it happens and they need to learn how to deal with it. The most important part of a conversation around failure is what they DID about it. What did they learn from the situation and how could they avoid it happening again?
EXE
ISE RC
3
What is Failure?
SAMPLE
This exercise is a reflection on what was covered in Learning Point 2. It is
vitally important for students to begin to think differently about what failure means and to adopt a different perspective from the norm on failure. Discussion is important here to illicit how
the students might perceive failure. Teachers could use the
Agreements method here to begin the class discussion, or if the teacher wished to have some movement they could use the Agree/Disagree method, where they might use the following statements or something similar:
You should give up once you fail.
Nobody of any significance ever failed.
Failure is only a stepping stone to achieving something better. Etc.
Learning Point 3 One of the key skills that is really important to learn in today’s world is the ability to keep going, to try again, to bounce back after failure. This is what is called resilience and students will learn all about it in the coming lessons.
PAUSE AND REFLECT Finish by asking students to reflect individually on their learning.
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