Thursday, March 16, 2017

Everyone is telling me to fail

You'd think these posts would get easier after the first one.  That having done one, I wouldn't be as worried about the rest.  But I guess a perfectionist procrastinator is always a perfectionist procrastinator.  That's what I get for surrounding myself with amazing #eduheroes as inspiration.  Totally worth it though.

Over the past few weeks I have found myself at various conferences and professional development and noticed an emerging trend.  Everyone is talking about failing.  They're talking about how important it is to teach our kids that it's ok to fail and even as teachers we need to throw away our fear of failure and take risks.  One thing that I think hasn't been getting as much play though is HOW to fail.  We talk about being ok with failure, but what do we tell kids (and ourselves) to do after they actually experience that failure?  For a lot of us, once we fail, do we know what to do to get back up?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately.  Because frankly, I'm in a fail cycle.  I have had a few setbacks as a coach and as a tech facilitator and I'm feeling a little lost.  I already feel as if I fight an uphill battle and when I make mistakes or through no fault of my own (I'm looking at you Cold and Flu Season) let down my teachers, it's as if I've fallen that much further down the hill.  I worry that I won't be able to gain back what little trust I had and that teachers will hesitate to buy into what I'm selling because it hasn't worked out perfectly before.

How do you gain back that creative momentum after a setback?


Source: lyrafay.tumblr.com

I'm still learning.