What do We do with Failure?
My latest mentor report--sent to LEMI--is titled, Epic Fail Week. My co-mentor and I constructed the opportunity for a constructive learning experience by letting our youth fail. We knew there was a habit of letting others cover for the group and not being successful. We saw the trend and decided to BUCK IT!
So here's the gist of the report.
So here's the gist of the report.
How did class go? We started with a pop quiz and persevered despite the excuses of, "I didn't finish the book! I shouldn't have to participate!" "You set us up to fail!"
"Uh... your failure is somehow my fault?" Love that reflective listening skill.
"Uh... your failure is somehow my fault?" Love that reflective listening skill.
It was successful -- because the youth experienced an EPIC FAIL. One girl noted, "I've never even gotten a C before." I responded, "and you haven't yet. You got an F!" "But, that could mean F for Fixable." We discussed college consequences, how professors can't give you another week on a subject or it throws off the entire schedule. We opened the discussion to prioritization, good, better, best discussions. How our QUEST class builds on foundational books and the students can't afford to miss out on even one.
A Life Skill?
A Life Skill?
There is so much success opportunity available in the process of failure. One can only move up!
What did you change? Our youth caught the vision and decided to meet for a conference call and make-up colloquia together Monday 11:30 and meanwhile, crunch over the weekend to finish the reading.
What did you change? Our youth caught the vision and decided to meet for a conference call and make-up colloquia together Monday 11:30 and meanwhile, crunch over the weekend to finish the reading.
If I were to do the lesson differently, I would have explored deeper and helped them discover what was their biggest difficulty. We found out later one student--who turned in a beautiful eight page writing paper--has disgraphia and we could have discussed her success with speech recognition software with her in class.
Looking forward with renewed spirit to the transformation to beauty from ashes, Happy Mentoring.
