Permission to Fail
I've been wanting to try something with my students for years but have put it off because I was worried that it wouldn't turn out the way I hoped it would. I won't bore you with the details of exactly what it was. I finally realized that I had to try, though, because of one of the biggest lessons I've learned as a teacher: magical things can happen when you give yourself permission to fail. Reminding myself of this lesson makes me work toward going bigger, better, and bolder every time. Sure, we totally crash and burn on "guinea pig" days in class sometimes. Yet, it's all worth it for the grins we get to share on the days when we realize that something is going right. Really right. Awesomely right. I set a personal goal to get my students to the point where I felt that we were ready to try the thing. You know, that thing... from the first paragraph. Little by little, chunk by chunk, we scaffolded and prepared without them even knowing that this t