UCDS Spark Magazine #16 - Failure, Spring 2016

ISSUE 16 - SPRING 2016

failure

“It’s only if you don’t learn from it.”

Abby, UCDS 5th Grader

In this Issue Spark is published by University Child Development School.

Head of School Paula Smith Assistant Head of School Teacher Education Center Director Melissa Chittenden

Sticky Curriculum 4

Pedestals and Monkey Bars: Best Failures in the Classroom

What Works

Publication Design Jack Forman

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Contributing Writers Joelle Harrison, Jill Marlow, Abby Sandberg, Jennifer Vary, Betsy Watkins, Lelia Yerxa

Creative Fusion

Contributing Editors Diane Chickadel, Melissa Chittenden, Jake Cutone, Jack Forman, Betty Greene, Stephen Harrison, Julie Kalmus, Jill Marlow, Elise Ricci, Natasha Rodgers, Abby Sandberg, Paula Smith, Tim Tetrault Photography Stephen Harrison, UCDS Faculty and Staff For submission information, please contact Jake Cutone at jakec@ucds.org.

The editor reserves the right to edit and select all materials.

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The Possibility of Failure: Cultivating a Culture of Reflection

Taking Action: Community Meets Colony

People Who Inspire Us 18

Lifesaving Teaching/Teaching Lifesaving: A Conversation With Dr. Kris Patton

In Each Issue 1

Greetings from Paula

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Spark Plugs

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UCDS Mission Statement

© 2016 University Child Development School.

All rights reserved.

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Falling down is an important part of standing up.

My niece and I were just finishing lunch in Central Park when her husband Gregory suddenly appeared on the sidewalk in front of us. He spun around in a graceful pirouette and came to a perfect stop inches from the iron railing that surrounded the café tables. His rollerblade skates were gleaming, a birthday gift that he had only unwrapped that morning.

He was wearing knee and hand guards, but clearly these were only for show. He seemed to move effortlessly on either foot forwards, backwards and even sideways, and had mastered several techniques for landing from a spin in the air. My niece laughed, “Now he plans to buy me a pair and I know it will be challenging to keep up with him, even on a leisurely trip around the park.”

Gregory’s aptitude as a skater was not surprising; he had only recently retired from a career as a professional acrobat and had been training and performing every day for over 20 years. When he joined us for coffee, I couldn’t resist asking him for training tips. “You just have to practice,” he told me with great certainty. “It was easy for me to learn to skate and actually, I can’t fall down,” he confessed, “even if you push me over.”

It seems counter intuitive that Gregory could become balanced and stable by falling down a lot, but in fact, this is exactly what had happened. Gregory has fallen thousands of times, and in many more complex ways than an average person. All this practice at falling required the neural pathways in Gregory’s brain to send millions of messages about the speed and distance he was traveling, about where exactly every part of his body was in space, and in order to avoid an injury, how to shift his position and move any limb with exceptional speed. Each repetition helped to strengthen the neural pathways in his brain[1] and because of this enhanced wiring, Gregory’s balance is extraordinary.

It turns out that failure was key to Gregory’s success. He trained every day and had ample opportunity to fall, to

recalibrate, and to fall again. Like any high achieving performer, Gregory had worked hard to reach his current level.

He had made thousands of mistakes, often practicing a single trick hundreds of times until he could perform it fluidly.

He used each failure as an opportunity to make progress; analyzing each mistake by breaking the down the sequence of moves to understand what he needed to do differently. This intense focus on the details of his performance actually caused Gregory to use his brain in a more complex and sophisticated way. This “deep practice”[2] made it possible for Gregory to make significant progress each time he trained. And, although it may be easier to observe an acrobat learn a tumbling trick, this process of gaining success through failure is the same whether learning mathematics, playing chess, or writing an essay.

Talent is often the first word that comes to mind when one watches a breathtaking performance. It is tempting to believe that only certain individuals possess the talent needed to reach expert status in a field and that these icons are “self made.” In reality, like the rest of us, high achieving people are also a product of their family and their community. It is no accident that a number of world-class athletes come from a single underfunded tennis club in Russia, or that Bobby Fischer played for nine years before reaching grandmaster status at age 17. In his book, The Talent Code, Daniel Coyle, visited “talent hotbeds”[3] all over the planet, and documented the powerful influence of a single star player, performer, researcher, leader, artist, author… who served as an inspiration to those following in their footsteps.

Gregory himself was such an influence whenever he trained at the Circus School (http://sancaseattle.org/)[4] here in Seattle. While classes of young children practiced basic tumbling tricks with their coach, Gregory and his troupe rehearsed complex stunts in full view on the opposite side of the room. Over the weeks and months of their classes, children watched as these talented performers trained together. This “motivational fuel”[5] has no doubt inspired a whole new generation acrobats and sent a clear message to the children that even experts in a field need to constantly practice to maintain their skill.

Over the years as a professional, Gregory learned a great deal from exceptionally skilled colleagues and they learned a great deal from him as well. His troupe depended on one another during every

performance. As they trained, each offered the others constant feedback, shared specific tips, and whenever they developed a new routine, made revisions to their original plan if something did not work well for one of their members. They trained together for years, each member of the team playing a vital role, and they recognized that their brilliant performance was only possible because of a high level of trust, hard work, and a commitment to their mutual success.

What we tell ourselves about the reason for our success has a well-documented impact on how things turn out. In her book Mindset[6], Dr. Carol Dweck summarizes decades of research on motivation and shares her finding that “a single sentence of praise can affect performance and effort…”[7] She observed this outcome in a study with 400 fifth graders who had completed a test of simple puzzles. “Half of the students were praised for their intelligence (“You must be smart at this.”), and half were praised for their effort (“You must have worked really hard.”).”[8] Children praised for their effort chose harder puzzles when offered a choice in a subsequent test and they improved their initial test score by 30% by the end of the study. Children praised for their intelligence were likely to select easier subsequent puzzles in order to avoid the risk of failure, and their score declined by 20% by the end of the study. Dweck notes, “When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that’s the name of the game: look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.”[9] Gregory’s story of success is not unique.

He discovered a passion, devoted himself to deep practice, and used every opportunity to learn from and to teach his peers. Like other high achieving individuals and their coaches, Gregory was not deterred by failure but viewed each setback as part of the journey toward reaching a worthy goal. Taken together, this brain research, behavioral research, and real life experiences of talented people like Gregory provide a compelling reason to re-think the design of our K-12 classrooms and programs in the US. Add to this evidence the need to teach 21st Century skills (critical thinking, collaboration, communication and creativity), and it is clear that this work should take priority in schools and districts nationwide. “There are more than 100,000 K- 1 2 schools in the United States, no two are alike. Nor should they be. Each one has its distinct set of teachers, students surrounding Continued >

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community, and aspirations.”[10] We believe that each school should have access to every resource needed to design a program that will engage and educate the children in that community. By sharing a bit of our school culture, we hope to help advance this work.

At UCDS, we design a culture of inquiry where children are learning how to learn in each domain, a culture that celebrates failure as evidence of progress towards mastery. We are intentional about the way

we set up classrooms, use our time, and the way we create and evaluate curriculum for the students we serve. Both the adults and the children in our community learn from one another. We believe that the learning opportunity is greatest if something does not work as expected.

Below are some of the key elements of our classroom culture and how these elements are expressed by our teachers and by our students.

[1] “Every human skill, whether it’s playing baseball or playing Bach, is created by chains of nerve fibers carrying a tiny electrical impulse – basically, a signal traveling through a circuit. Myelin’s role is to wrap those nerve fibers the same way that rubber insulation wraps a copper wire, making the signal stronger and faster by preventing the electrical impulses from leaking out. When we fire our circuits in the right way… our myelin responds by wrapping layers of insulation around that neural circuit, each new layer adding a bit more skill and speed. The thicker the myelin gets, the better it insulates and the faster and more accurate our movements and thoughts become.” Daniel Coyle, The Talent Code (New York: Bantam, 2009), 5.

[2] Coyle, The Talent Code, chapter 1.

[3] Coyle, 12.

[4] School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts, located at 674 S Orcas St., Seattle, WA 98108 [5] Coyle, 97.

[6] Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (New York: Ballantine, 2006).

[7] Coyle, 135.

[8] Coyle, 136.

[9] Coyle, 136.

[10] Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner, Most Likely to Succeed (New York: Scriber, 2015), p. 84.

Do the students care and is everyone engaged?

Teachers say: Everyone seems to be leaning forward, both

teachers and students. The task has to be worthy… hard enough to inspire real effort. Teachers think about what will make a project matter to the kids and they design stretches for those who need them. We encourage students to share their approach with classmates and act as coaches for each other. In this collaborative culture, failure inspires excitement and determination.

Students say: Doing math is like sort of like trying to figure out a

riddle. The teacher might give you a strategy that you can use and you try to figure it out. There are so many different ways to solve it. The different strategies help. If this didn’t work, then this strategy might.

I buddy up with someone else so we can help each other. It is like a little puzzle. When I finally figure it out, I like that moment.

– 5th grade student, June

Are the students driven to meet a challenge?

Teachers say: The way we work with students sends a powerful

message that this is their work and that they are capable of meeting a challenge. We encourage children to try out their ideas, to share their strategy, and to analyze the result. If the problem or project is difficult enough, a student may have to start over. We don’t swoop in and “teach” the answer. Every student can have that “aha” moment.

Students say: I like Math Vitamins because they are tricky. It

takes a lot of effort, and persistence to problem solve a tricky thing or something else hard for you to find out. So, I really do like tricky things. It feels amazing because you feel like you’ve accomplished something. Even if you don’t get a math vitamin totally done, you seem to have learned something. So, you are always learning.

– 5th grade student, Tucker

Is there time to struggle and to start over?

Teachers say: We carve out blocks of time and make it clear

Students say: Don’t give up if you find something hard, can’t

that this problem may not be solved in one sitting. Teachers design problems that can be solved in multiple ways. We expect that students may fail and have to start over.

figure it out, ask a friend, check your work and stuff. Always read over your work… don’t give up… if you fail, don’t think you are horrible at something, if you make a mistake you will do it better the next time… try again and again until you get it right! – 5th grade student, Tilden

Do we see failure as a natural part of the learning process?

Teachers say: We model how to think out loud, to deconstruct our thinking, and to share mistakes. We encourage students to analyze their steps to figure out what they might try next and we are there to ask questions. We want our students to know how to identify a sticking point and to advocate for themselves if they are stuck.

Students say: I love the challenges because you really stretch and

there are so many different ways to do it. I think failure is just another way to succeed. Because you need to have the failures so you can learn from them. And be like, “Oh! Well this didn’t work last time so I am going to try something different to work on.” Failure is going good. Failure is great!

– 5th grade student, Ellie

Is there time for reflection?

Teachers say: We encourage students to share both what worked

and what didn’t. It is not a race to the answer but rather, to learn how to select and employ a successful strategy. We ask students to reflect, to think about their thinking, to become self-aware and to understand their own strengths and weaknesses.

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Students say: A big piece of advice that I thought of for myself for

the coming years is: don’t be afraid to try, like try thoughts and work with a thought. And, if it doesn’t work, try a new one, but don’t think, “ok, this thought, it’s a bit weird so maybe I shouldn’t go with it.”

Go with the weird thought! Continue with it, and if it doesn’t work, try another one. Try to get that new perspective, and then see if you can find another one that works with it as well, and if you put them together, that could work very well.

– 5th grade student, Ella

Paula Smith Head of School

Spark Plugs

The Gift of Failure: How the Best Parents Learn to Let Go So Their Children Can Succeed Jessica Lahey What motivates our students? What drives parents and teachers? In The Gift of Failure, Jessica Lahey investigates the pitfalls of over-parenting and takes a deeper look at how our students can learn to be resilient self-starters. The Gift of Failure explores students’ fraught relationship between intrinsic motivation and the external reward systems that often drive short-term results. Lahey’s book adds to the choir of voices calling for parents to become more aware of how overcoming challenges and obstacles helps children develop competency and self-confidence. A great read for any parent or educator that wishes to help young people grow toward successful adulthood.

A More Beautiful Question: The Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas Warren Berger As inquiry and innovation continue to gain traction as key drivers in our society, learning to ask better, braver and more impactful questions becomes a necessary skill. Berger challenges schools to consider how to encourage deeper question asking among students and faculty, rallies businesses to use questions to provoke creativity and thoughtful solutions and suggests individuals use questions to gain clarity and purpose in relationships and life pursuits. A More Beautiful Question offers a process for innovative question asking that leads to imaginative and powerful solutions and answers.

How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success Julie Lythcott-Haims Powerful and well researched, How to Raise an Adult delves deep into the psyche of well intentioned, albeit overbearing, parents. The author- a parent and former Dean of Freshmen at Stanford University- empathizes with the concerns parents have about the future welfare of their children.

However, she cites evidence that overprotective parents can actually inflict harm by depriving their children of essential developmental experiences derived from risk-taking and failure. How to Raise an Adult does more than point out the shortcomings of parents. The author also provides specific actions parents can take to raise their children to become competent and confident adults.

Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work Matthew Crawford Matthew Crawford (The World Beyond Your Head) lives bi-vocationally, balancing the life of the mind as philosopher alongside the material, manual challenge of a fabricator of custom motorcycle parts. In Shop Class, he identifies brilliantly how moving from the constructed world of the intellect can crash against the material reality of bringing an idea to life in the physical world. This iterative process is nearly universal to all labor, but can be forgotten, obscured or denied in an economy dominated by so-called “knowledge work.” Crawford profiles a motorcycle mechanic as a living library of material knowledge. This man, full of the subtleties of skill (including olfactory recognition of mechanical conditions) necessary to make arcane parts work and engines run, provides a stark contrast to our Google/Wikipedia quests for the swift resolution to our intellectual queries. This book is a prophetic call to value the messiness and necessity of failure as both an antidote to intellectual arrogance and an irreplaceable part of real work.

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Sticky Curriculum

Pedestals

&

Mo

Best F

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onkey Bars:

Failures in the Classroom

by Joelle Harrison & Jill Marlow

At UCDS, from students to faculty, on the playground and in the classroom, failure is welcomed and celebrated as part of the learning process. Why? For many parents and educators, failure is something to be avoided and prevented in order to protect confidence and self-esteem.

At UCDS, we believe that the opposite is true. It is the failures, and the lessons learned from failures, that strengthen confidence and self-esteem. When given permission to fail, students and teachers learn to take risks, to try new things and to persevere.

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“I did it!! I finally made it all the way across the monkey bars!”

Monkey bar callouses are considered a badge of honor on the playground

On the playground, pride and excitement radiated from 4 year old Aya as she celebrated her accomplishment. “I did it!!

I finally made it all the way across the monkey bars!”

Like so many successes, the road to Aya’s achievement was filled with (literal!) bumps, falls and failures.

Recess after recess, Aya stuck with it, and each failed attempt (and callous) was celebrated as it brought her one step closer to her goal, helping her learn what to do and what not to do and building her confidence.

When children overcome failures, they are empowered with the knowledge that they can achieve a goal and that they can apply their skills and learning to solve problems and make discoveries.

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It is not by chance that failure is such an integral part of our learning community. It is intentional and thoughtful; we actively work to create an environment and curriculum that invites and supports failure.

Here is how we do it:

1. Students are presented with interesting and meaningful challenges.

By posing hard questions, we strive to help kids see challenges as fun and as something they will learn from. Nowhere is this more evident than when students are tackling a juicy Math Vitamin. Math Vitamins are open-ended story problems that connect to the literature, science, and social studies projects of each grade level. Students are connected to the question and interested in the answer. Teachers carefully design problems to challenge students at multiple levels of understanding within each classroom. If a child finds a solution quickly and easily, teachers are ready to ask questions, adding a new layer of depth, knowing that it is the stretch that captures the students’

interest, and it is the trial and error — the failures—that provide opportunities to grow and learn.

Math Vitamins require students to create a plan and build a solution to a challenging mathematical dilemma.

As they create a model using math manipulatives or other building supplies and tools, students literally construct their own understanding.

This hands-on and iterative process— plan, test, reflect and revise—actively engages students as they design their unique solutions. Designing their own solutions leads to a curiosity and investment that can be more difficult to achieve when a student knows there is a single path leading to one final answer. As in life, there is no answer key for these problems and there are many possible paths and solutions.

In a recent Math Vitamin, 4th and 5th grade students were challenged to design cylindrical display pedestals for an art gallery. Equipped with the artwork’s dimensions and the necessary height of a pedestal, they would need to determine a suitable diameter and then work to design and construct a .25 scale model of the pedestal. No two models would

be exactly the same and, as is often the case in the real world, there was no answer key to check. Students embarked upon the iterative process of designing their models. They created plans and made calculations, applying previously discovered formulas for circumference and area of a circle and practicing multiplication with decimals. They tested the validity of their calculations by measuring and cutting cardstock to construct their pedestal model. Inevitably, along the way, mistakes were made. Some so minor that they were barely noticed and some so crucial that the result could be considered nothing less than a failure.

But therein lie the biggest discoveries—the “a-ha” moments that leave a lasting impression.

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Being able to explain their thinking, mistakes included, empowers students to approach mathematical dilemmas with confidence

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Students “get messy” as they build pedestal prototypes

2. Students have enough independence and autonomy to fail.

Constructing a model based on their own plan and calculations allows students to see the splendors and the spoils that are not always as evident in paper and pencil endeavors. Mistakes that may be overlooked or noticed much later on paper are blaringly evident when physically constructed.

Models provide an opportunity to fail, respond and adjust to failure.

As students began to construct their pedestal models, it became clear to a few of them that somewhere in their processes they had made a mistake.

One boy held up his failed experiment, a skinny cylinder barely thicker than a pencil, clearly not sturdy enough

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to support a piece of artwork, and their “pencil pedestals” emerged. The students conferred, began to doublecheck calculations and yet were still unsure of the culprit. A teacher guided them to reflect on their process from a new angle. She handed them a three-dimensional cylinder and asked them to consider what it would look like broken down and flattened into two-dimensional parts. They drew a rectangle as the flattened shape of the cylinder with two circles, above and below, as the top and bottom bases.

A-ha! A realization suddenly hit them!

In looking at the cylinder in a new way, they realized they had mistakenly used the measurement of the diameter, rather than the circumference, to cut out the length of the rectangular wrapping. With the diameter being much smaller than the circumference, it created a much more narrow cylinder. Armed with new knowledge and a greater understanding of how to calculate and construct cylinders,

the students revised their plan and successfully created a reasonable pedestal model.

The extra cardstock, crossed-out calculations and additional elbow grease made for a messy process.

However, would these students have learned as much if they had been given a set of step-by-step instructions or filled out a worksheet about cylinders?

In the long run, the most important part is not that the students remember how to measure or construct a cylinder but that they have had one more opportunity to plan, test, reflect and revise as they pursued a challenging problem. This iterative approach allows students to build their metacognitive skills as they reflect upon their own learning process. Giving students the opportunity to test their unique ideas, as well as to fail, encourages them to become ever more resilient learners and creative thinkers.

Conversation across the table about the design process that lead to a successful final piece

3. Students and teachers reflect on and discuss their failures openly.

“Good job! That was a better fail!” Jaden, a 2nd grader offered encouragingly. The “best failures” are something we strive for and celebrate at UCDS. The best opportunities to learn, to stretch, to grow, to persevere and to flourish. Failures are not only the territory of students. UCDS teachers are subject to failed attempts as well.

Our curriculum is emergent and unique; teachers work together to design activities, experiences and challenges that fit our yearly school-wide theme.

There is no scripted curriculum with defined problems and answers. This means that teachers, too, are taking risks, trying new things and constantly

evaluating. Reflection and discussion are built into every planning meeting.

“Did it work? Why not? What should we do differently?” Teachers take every opportunity to model this process for their students. In preschool and Kindergarten classrooms, for example, classes often meet to discuss and reflect on a day’s Math Vitamin work.

With the students’ help, a teacher walks through the steps and the process used to solve the problem.

Along the way, the teacher purposefully makes mistakes, thinking aloud to model thinking processes and a positive attitude towards mistakes and failure: “Wait a minute – I built two trees with three apples on each tree, but my equation says 3X2. That doesn’t match the order of my story! I need to change something.” At another moment, the teacher might model, “I keep getting a different number when I count my blocks. I wonder what I can do differently to make sure I am accurate?”

Acknowledging that adults also try and fail is important for normalizing failure and creating a community of learners.

There can be a lot to learn from each failed Math Vitamin;as 5th grader Abby so wisely reflected, “It’s only failure if you don’t learn from it.”

“We’re always taught not to erase our mistakes because we can learn from them if we see them. If you erase them you’ll forget about it and not be able to learn. I tell my brother that when he does his homework.”

– Caitrain, UCDS 4th Grade

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What Works

The Possibility of Failure: Cultivating a Culture of Reflection 10

by Betsy Watkins and Lelia Yerxa

There are innumerable moments in life when failure stands before us as a terrifying outcome. If we are not careful, the word failure will conjure up images so paralyzing that it will hardly be worth taking the risk of getting started in the first place. After all, there is perhaps nothing worse than working tirelessly only to reach an end point marked with the word “failure.�

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Active reflection is a skill that is modeled by teachers and practiced by students every day

But what if we shift the way we look at failure?

What if we design a culture in which failure is not an endpoint, something to be avoided, but instead a welcome part of the process of learning? What if every failure is full of possibility?

Imagine a culture of reflection in our classrooms, meetings with colleagues and our homes, in which we use our mistakes as a source of inspiration, a culture in which we not only have the freedom to fail but also are supported to examine our process, refine our thinking and use this information to inform our work going forward. Picture the ways that learners of every age would readily embrace challenges, experiment with creative solutions and persist through difficulties with unprecedented tenacity if they were expected to fail as part of their process. Failure is not an endpoint in a culture of reflection. The practice of active reflection is central to crafting a community that celebrates difficulty, promotes innovative problem solving and understands that there is no end to learning. An ability to self-reflect is

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also important beyond the classroom.

It is a core ingredient in preparing both ourselves and our children for the world at large and each of the unique challenges the world presents.

In a school, building a culture of reflection begins with our own work as teachers. We must start with a willingness to try and fail and see ourselves as learners alongside students in our classrooms. We must be willing to say the words “I’m not sure,” try our hand at problem solving and celebrate not only successes but also the information gleaned from our mistakes. “Well that didn’t work!

Why not? What else can we try?” is not an uncommon refrain in a culture of reflection.

At UCDS, we not only demonstrate risktaking and reflection with our students but also create space for reflection in our collaborative process of designing curricula. In planning meetings, teachers engage in the process of sharing ideas to build big problems for our students to grapple with. As we share ideas, discussion allows us to experiment with possibilities, pool resources and refine our thinking. After our students have engaged with the problems, we ensure that we revisit our designs, examining our successes

and failures, the processes students employed and how these results can inform our work with students going forward. As educators we all have the occasional slam-dunk day where the curriculum is inspired, we are able to individualize to meet the needs of each student, and the classroom is filled with “Ahas!” But more often than not, days are filled with moments that did not go as we imagined. Instead of seeing any of these failures as endpoints, we choose to see them as proactive moments of opportunity.

With our students and our colleagues, we can narrate the possibilities of our mistakes.

Setting this expectation and space for reflection in our own work enables us to transfer it to our work with students in our classrooms. Just as athletes train with dedication to self improvement, pushing themselves to their limits, we can create learning experiences for our students where failure is an expected part of the process. At UCDS, reflection—both individual and group—is built into the day across the curriculum. In daily Math Vitamins, students grapple with complex questions. We present students with problems without always knowing what the outcome might have to look

like, therefore requiring students to be creative in their problem-solving. They experiment with their ideas: testing, observing results and looking back to refine their process. As students work, they debrief their ideas and strategies with their teachers and peers.

While students tackle their writing projects in Writer’s Workshop, they are asked not only to draft their ideas but also examine their writing process.

Through conferences with teachers and sharing their writing with peers, students reflect on what worked in their writing and what did not. Peer feedback and questions are integral to helping students develop the ability to reflect on their work. If a peer is unclear about the events in a story, the student learns to ask him or herself, “How can I make this part more clear to my reader?”

Students must not rest after the work of reflection. This is then their opportunity to revise their writing before creating a final draft. Whether engaging in mathematics, writing, reading, the scientific process or an art project, the role of reflection is vital to learning from our failures.

In addition to reflecting in the academic realms of the classroom, there are ample opportunities for students and teachers to create reflective spaces around social and emotional development. Whether students are considering possibilities to deal with a problem on the playground or navigating joining in a new game, a teacher listening carefully and helping students reflect on their actions can lead to students being more able to self-advocate. As students learn to identify their own mistakes and to reflect on the actions of others, they begin to respond more compassionately when conflicts arise. It becomes part of the culture to begin to ask, “What could I have done differently? How would I expect someone to react if. . ? Was that the outcome I was expecting?”

At UCDS, Class Meeting is another venue for reflecting on classroom or school-wide issues. In conversations, students discuss what has worked well or not worked well and share ideas about possible solutions. They analyze classroom and school systems, try out

new ones, assess the results and redesign their solutions as necessary.

Throughout the day, our students are asked to look back on their experiences and reflect on their successes and failures. These moments are not seen as endpoints but as expected parts of the process, full of possibilities, as we continue the important work of learning.

At both school and home, failure is an inevitable part of the learning process. If we are learning as much as we possibly can, we can expect failure along the way. As the adults in our children’s lives, this is where our work begins. We must become comfortable with making our moments of failure visible and narrating the possibilities that arise from reflecting on these moments. Conferences and conversations between parents and educators should celebrate the ways that we allow our children to do the hard work of learning. Cultivating a culture of reflection opens up the freedom to take risks, encounter failure and create something greater than what would have been without failure as an integral part of the process.

Students at all grades are encouraged to voice their opinion

Class meeting is a time for group reflection and assessment

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Creative Fusion

Taking Action:

by Abby Sandberg and Jennifer Vary

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UCDS students advocating for animals and the environment in Red Square on the University of Washington campus

What is failure?

At UCDS, we view failure as an opportunity for students to develop important problemsolving skills. Resilience, critical thinking skills, and perseverance all can be nurtured and grown in the face of failure. When children are young it is the optimal time to help them practice responding to failed situations and develop these important skills. Experience responding to minor failures provides the foundation for students to tackle larger issues

with an open mind and a willingness to take risks. Students who realize their own agency grow into individuals who are empowered and have confidence to act in their communities. We saw this firsthand when a group of young UCDS students recently addressed an environmental crisis head-on as they examined the plight of the honey bee and the effects of colony collapse on world food sources.

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be avoided. Rather, each problem must be carefully examined and reflected upon. The way that teachers guide students to respond to small everyday classroom conundrums sets the stage for this learning.

Theme Fair becomes a venue for student advocates

“Come learn the new Buzz on Bees!” ...shouted a first-grade girl, clipboard in hand, as she was ready to promote a few ways anyone can bolster the declining global bee population.

Parents and other students crowded around as she launched into describing how to create a bee oasis in one’s own backyard. It was our school’s annual Theme Fair, where students highlight and share the essence of their spring curricular work with members of the school community. Inspired by Dr. Jane Goodall’s work to support the natural habitat of chimpanzees, students in the first and second grade classrooms had wanted to learn more about the animal kingdom around them.

After learning that the declining bee population has a significant impact on global food sources, students in the first and second grades readied into action. They learned about bees, identified a need and problem solved through several iterations of how to help. Although they learned that not every idea was a viable solution, they worked through these iterations to arrive at several actions that anyone can take to support the bee population.

“Here is a mason bee hive that you can put by your garden,” the first-grade girl explained, “You have probably heard about the bee colony collapse; it is a really big problem for all of us.

We researched ways that you can help right in your own backyards. So we are encouraging everyone to plant bee friendly plants in their yards or maybe to put up a mason bee hive. Don’t worry, the mason bees won’t sting.”

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“Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.” These inspirational words from Dr. Jane Goodall called our young students into action to promote a healthy bee population. When students view failing situations as an opportunity to make a positive change in the world, they do not become deterred by their age, size or the daunting goals ahead of them. Instead, they call upon their past experiences righting unsuccessful situations and jump fully into the problem-solving process. In fact, they quickly identified with the bees—small creatures that have a large impact on the world around them. Teachers supported the students’ process by helping them articulate the problem with the bee population and put their skills addressing failure into action.

Using their growing comfort with the design thinking process, the students researched bees, looking at their habitat, their physiology, their patterns in pollination, their impact on food and our global dependence on them.

Tackling the challenge of sustaining the global bee population may seem like an overwhelming issue for first and second grade students. What empowered these young students to take on this charge? How did they courageously venture into creating change in what seems to be a failing ecosystem? How were they confident that their efforts would make an impact? By creating a school culture that values failure as a growing experience, students learn that dilemmas and predicaments are not to

An important first step in creating this foundation is simply helping students acknowledge failed situations. During the school day, teachers are vigilant, watching for opportunities to coach students through predicaments that will require multiple attempts towards success. Perhaps a student’s math problem solving has led to a dead end, a student is struggling to complete his work in a timely manner or a playground game has ended in hurt feelings. By encouraging students to acknowledge the situation and remain open to problem solving, teachers support students to develop confidence and ease towards developing solutions. Students come to realize that failure is simply an unsuccessful attempt to reach their goal. Teachers empower students to take accountability for these situations by resisting the urge to feel personally defeated but instead focus their energy on developing new strategies to attack the problem. As a result, students learn that noticing and talking about failures are the first steps in overcoming them and reaching success.

Discussing predicaments is not only the first step in finding new solutions but also an important step in feeling empowered and “in charge” of a challenge. With this confidence in tow, students learn the power of their own abilities to tackle adversity. When students are facing a situation marked by failure, teachers encourage them to reflect on what they know, brainstorm new approaches to the problem and choose a novel path towards a solution.

Teachers guide students, when they are stuck in the process, to look beyond their personal resources to see what others in the community might offer.

They learn that their peers often have fresh perspectives and ideas to share.

With so many opportunities to address failed situations, every student will undoubtedly have the chance to be both the problem solver and the expert who offers an innovative solution.

Students who are confident problem solvers learn that anyone can be an

active participant in facilitating change.

In addition, when they experience success in overcoming failure, their confidence tackling bigger and more complex challenges grows. With this solid foundation noticing and discussing unsuccessful situations, students’ become vigilantly attuned to opportunities where a situation can be improved.

Using these moments as opportunities to teach can open up and help develop critical problem solving skills. For example, one of the small “hive” groups developed their understanding of bees’ role in pollination. As teachers posed the question, “What do bees need?” The students’ brainstormed ideas and identified one that seemed to make the most sense, “the bees need flowers to pollinate.” That led them to investigate and learn more about flowers, specifically bee friendly and native plants. So they visited local nurseries, talked to a naturalist, looked at what is easy to grow and what smells good too.

With the research behind them, the students moved to, “How do we let people know? What materials do we need? What do we want people to do about this problem?” The group developed an action plan of how to inform their community and share ways community members can make a difference. Their goal was to establish and build others’ understanding that their involvement in the solution is important. The students made colorful posters, selected a variety of bee friendly flower seeds, and developed tutorials on how to transplant a seedling into a garden or yard. Before they shared their message with the larger community they practiced, “Step right up and plant a native seed in your yard. We have a variety of seeds to choose from.” As students rehearsed their pitches, their peers listened and offered feedback. Small group collaborations gave students a chance to practice, and build and strengthen their problem solving skill set, preparing them for future challenges.

As the crowds subsided at Theme Fair and the students returned to their classrooms, teachers led them to think about how they could replicate what they had just learned about bees. “We need to be the voice for

When students view failing situations as an opportunity to make a positive change in the world, they do not become deterred by their age, size or the daunting goals ahead of them.

Students share their research with Jane Goodall, PhD, DBE

the animals and let people know how global warming is affecting their habitat,” one second grader shared during a reflection discussion. He got the other students excited about other ideas, ways they can help save polar bears in the Arctic or adopt animals from local shelters. Their passion grew, undaunted by the magnitude of the challenge or the obstacles they might encounter. Teachers helped facilitate this discussion further as students created mission statements, wrote slogans and designed logos to promote their new causes. Armed with their prior experiences and passion to tackle new challenges, the students took their activism posters and lots of temporary tattoos to spread the

word in Red Square on the University of Washington campus to college students and faculty. “Would you like to hear how you can help save the polar bears?” “If you walk or bike you will help cut down on carbon emissions.”

“Have a tattoo of a polar bear biking to remind you.” Comfort in addressing failing situations is certainly a catalyst to take on additional challenges.

Whether students are solving a math problem or thinking about global warming, experience with overcoming failure provides a foundation of critical thinking skills that allows students to seek solutions with greater independence and the mindset that they can do it.

Activism in action on the UW campus

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People Who Inspire Us

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Life s a v i n g Te a c hi n g ~ Te a c hi n g Life s a v i n g (A C o n v e r s a t i o n w i t h D r. K r i s Pa t t o n)

Dr. Kris Patton is a cardiologist specializing in electrophysiology, a medical subspecialty focusing on the heart’s electrical system.

She teaches about her area of expertise at the University of Washington, where she also runs a training program, teaching physicians procedures such as putting in pacemakers and defibrillators as well as how to map out abnormal electrical signals in the heart. Kris shares her insights about the challenges and benefits of “failure” in a high-stakes field and how she approaches this conundrum when training other medical professionals.

Continued >

UCDS parent, John Neilson loved ideas; those he found in literature and those he gained through a deep appreciation of world culture, math, science, art, music, philosophy and physical excellence.

In 1999, at the age of thirty-eight, John lost a hard fought battle against nonHodgkin’s lymphoma. In honor of John’s life, The Neilson Endowment Fund was created. Through the Teacher Education Center at UCDS, we use this endowment to create and share programs that offer children access to big ideas.

John was an inspiration to us in life and we dedicate this, ‘People Who Inspire Us’ section to him.

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“Just because the learner is an adult, it doesn’t mean that they are an adult learner.

UCDS: Can you talk a little bit about your work and what teaching and learning looks like in your field?

Kris: I’m a cardiologist in a subspecialty field, called electrophysiology. I work on the heart’s electrical system.

I also teach at the University of Washington and run their training program for general cardiologists and electrophysiologists to-be.

We do procedures mostly; I put in pacemakers and defibrillators and do other procedures called ablations, where you map out abnormal electrical signals in the heart. And it’s been really interesting because my field is very technologically-driven. And yet, at the same time, we’re still trying to figure out how we can teach both general physicians and specialists how to learn huge amounts of material. But, I think medicine has finally started moving away from a very basic apprenticeship model. We are now using what we know about adult learning to be able to understand not just ‘How do you learn what you need to know in terms of the knowledge-base for medicine?’, but how you put that into practice. How do you communicate to patients? How do you communicate to other providers, to family members, to nurses, to the rest of the team that’s taking care of patients? So, it ends up that, instead of medicine being a very science and knowledge-based practice, it really requires all of these other skills that have not traditionally been a part of medical education. You really have to take different aspects of learning theory and apply them to all these different aspects of the work.

UCDS: So how do you accomplish this in what is essentially a high-stakes environment?

Kris: Well, we don’t really like to admit it very much that we make mistakes in medicine, right? It is interesting when you look at the training mode of medicine, you think about, ‘When is it that we expect people to be able to not

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know everything?’ It’s not rational that we expect doctors to know everything from the beginning, but we sort of do.

There’s this incredible moral code in medicine where it’s unethical to not know everything, because you never want to be wrong, and you never want to fail. As much as we have data that simulation in medicine is very useful for increasing performance, there aren’t simulators for everything. There actually aren’t simulators for most things. So you have to be very careful because, on the one hand, you want to create learners that are curious and can solve problems, but you have to create a safe environment for them to not always choose the right thing.

But, of course, the environment for the patient also has to be safe. This whole issue of failure is complicated, and this is accentuated by the fact that there are very high expectations of medicine.

Often patients don’t really understand that despite all that we know in medicine, there is much more that we don’t know.

UCDS: There are clearly drawbacks to failing in the medical field, but is there a flip side? Are there elements of the mistake-making process that you and your students benefit from?

Kris: I think you have to fail, because it’s the only way that you can push science forward. It’s the same issue anywhere in terms of innovation.

There may be a medical procedure you just can’t get done, or you feel like you’re ineffective in terms of how you’ve communicated an issue to a patient. It’s when you’re reflecting on those circumstances, both while it’s happening, and then afterwards, that pushes everything forward. That’s true of every aspect of medicine, just like every other field.

UCDS: What are some practices that you’ve brought into your teaching that help your students foster innovation and professional growth?

Kris: Overall adult learning is such an interesting area to me because this has been a tremendous time of change for medical education. As someone who is teaching on a daily basis, I have a sense that just because the learner is an adult, it doesn’t mean that they are an adult learner. Even though people usually come to medicine being highly-motivated, I’m finding that, to some extent, even multiyear residents are not coming to me with the concept that their education is their own responsibility. Every month I find myself having introductory discussions with my trainees to talk about their learning goals. Inevitably I get these astonished, eye-opened responses, like “What’s a learning goal, and why would I have one?” Which always used to surprise me. Now I expect it.

The first few times I have clinics with my trainees, I need to orient them to the whole idea of having a learning goal. They have spent years and years of medical education mostly with the idea that they are just trying to learn the basics.

They have to gather all the necessary knowledge and information.

In this more hands on setting, they need to know how to complete a clinic visit.

Then, they also have to learn how to establish relationships with patients, how to document clinical visits, along with all the other administrative tasks involved in a patient visit. I’ve been introducing the idea of goal-setting early on so they can start thinking about the clinic visit as an arena in which they can pull in a little bit of deliberate practice, for example. The idea is that your trainees pick something that they particularly want to focus on, and in turn, they receive specific feedback. This really brings home the notion that they need to own the responsibility for their learning. Hopefully they begin to recognize that identifying the gaps in their practice is a difficult, but essential part of becoming a lifelong learner. That’s really how we all get better.

UCDS: It sounds like you are really talking about a mindset, more than a skillset. Is this something you and your colleagues are focusing on?

Want more Spark?

Kris: Carol Dweck’s Mindset framework has been really useful to me as an educator. It’s pretty common in medicine for people to bring with them a fixed mindset. Most people who go into medicine are pretty good test-takers and they’re pretty good at performancebased outcomes. The way in which we get students to college and then medical school inherently selects for people who achieve highly on performance-based testing. Consequently, this brings up the idea of ‘how do you emotionally deal with failure?’ If you bring more of a growth mindset to your medical setting and something bad does happen, instead of thinking “I’m a bad person” or “I have inadequate skills or inadequate talent, I can’t do this,” you think “what can I learn from this? How can I change this? How can I improve this?” You’re going to do a lot better for everyone, including yourself. And having that framework as an educator can help you guide people towards a growth mindset.

It’s fundamentally important and also fascinating to me. I use it a lot when I give people feedback.

Head to ucds.org/spark to learn about...

1. our online PD 2. our new iPad app 3. our summer Math Workshop

UCDS: Are there qualities that you see in your trainees that allow them to push forward when challenging circumstances arise?

Kris: It may be a mindset issue. People who have the resilience to recover from causing a complication in a human being are not the people who are thinking “I can’t do this.” Doctors have really, really difficult cases. And then, of course, they have another difficult case scheduled to follow. So we intentionally set up circumstances where we are meeting with colleagues to talk about cases that are difficult or to discuss issues for improvement. The idea is that we want to normalize uncertainty. We want doctors to understand that sometimes it’s okay to not know. What’s important is that you understand when you don’t know something and that you use all the resources you can to try to make the best decision. I have to show my trainees that it’s okay not to know, and it’s okay to be looking for an answer.

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NON-PROFIT ORG. U. S. POSTAGE P A I D SEATTLE, WA. PERMIT NO. 02488

2015-2016 UCDS Board of Trustees Officers Kobi Yamada, Chair Janet Donelson, Co-Vice Chair Howard Burton, Co-Vice Chair Greg Headrick, Treasurer Michelle Goldberg, Secretary Members at Large David Brannon-Cirone Joe Gruber Jarrad Harford Steve Hollomon Katie Jordan Van Katzman Laurie Rosini Rebecca Stuart Adam Tratt Dina Wampold Ex-Officio Members Paula Smith, Head of School Nikki Lundin, Parent Association President Jennifer Vary, Faculty Representative University Child Development School 5062 9th Ave NE Seattle, WA 98105 206-547-UCDS (8237) www.ucds.org

The UCDS Mission University Child Development School designs a culture of inquiry essential to meaningful learning. We cultivate reflective, collaborative, skillful thinkers who ignite positive change in their communities. We engage diverse perspectives in an ongoing effort to shape and share our innovative education model.