Failing Forward: Creating a Culture of Positive Failure

Failing Forward: Creating a Culture of Positive Failure

Giving the gift of resilience, grit, and confidence with Breakout EDU

Few people would say they love their coach in the midst of a particularly grueling workout. Fewer still would claim to appreciate a failing grade or losing a game for the umpteenth time.  As we grow older (and hopefully wiser), we realize (painfully) that failure can actually be a gift. 

For students who are still in the process of forming their own identities, the pull to quit when failure seems likely is often stronger than the push to press on. The very idea of failure for many students, let alone public failure, feels like the threat of a nightmare. 

Developing a culture of healthy failure in a classroom is a gift in and of itself. Incorporating rigorous, challenging, and collaborative learning opportunities like Breakout EDU games, provides students the chance to both win and lose while encouraging them to respect failure, work hard, collaborate often, control big emotions, and celebrate hard-earned wins with gusto. 

Advantages of failure

At some point, all students will learn the bitter truth that sometimes, even when they have studied hard and tried their best, failure still happens. The truth hurts. 

Yet, only through living these experiences will they also learn they possess more talent and moxie than they first believed. Setbacks happen to the best of us with bad days sometimes outnumbering the good, yet we learn to try a different approach the next time around. 

Breakout EDU games put students in competition with themselves and others with standards-based, rigorous academic activities. They are tasked with beating a clock (or another team) to locate a solution to a problem strategically hidden in plain sight - and rooted in the content they have learned. Breakout EDU games provide students with opportunities to apply content knowledge in unique ways. They earn informative feedback as they go and, by the nature of the games, are pushed to try new ideas until they are able to come up with a solution that works. Unlike a traditional yes/no or correct/incorrect response from an assessment or teacher, an error does not mean the end - it’s not a summative measure. With Breakout EDU, an error simply means try again. This teaches students that being wrong is not a static concept. In fact, being wrong is the path to becoming right - and persistence is key.    

Implementing digital or hands-on versions of Breakout EDU games support key benefits of healthy failure, and of 21st-century skills, in a classroom. Experiencing failure builds: 

1.Resilience

Failure develops resilience in the face of difficult tasks. If students only experience success, they will continue doing the same thing without evolving their understanding or practice. Failing at times prompts them to adapt and think outside the [Breakout EDU] box. 

2. Character

With failure, students develop a deeper understanding of themselves. Integrating independent or collaborative debrief activities after a game allows students to self-evaluate their emotional responses and approach to problem-solving. 

3. Compassion

When a student experiences failure and witnesses peers experiencing the same, empathy and understanding are the result. The end of a game often presents both sore losers and sore winners. Embrace these teachable moments to develop a culture of healthy failure where students commiserate with one another while evaluating where they think they went wrong. 

4. Creativity

When students are taught to monitor their work as they go for signs of failure they learn to quickly think of ways to approach a task differently.  They begin to detect warning signals along the way and gain an appreciation for outside and creative approaches.

5. Calculated risk-taking

There is no real alternative to failure. Success means taking calculated risks - a process that becomes easier as students learn from each failure and embrace the lesson each instance holds for them.

Conclusion

It is easy for students to transform a single loss to an all-encompassing feeling of being bad at everything. 

What’s not easy is using failure as a stepping stone to discovering the kind of student, player, and person they truly are. That’s where educators can step up to the plate and guide them on this important journey. 

Losing is an essential feature of games, and let’s face it - life - that leads to greater potential for a student’s character. Encouraging risk in classrooms by providing activities and space for failure promotes self-esteem, community building, and personal growth.  

Embrace failure as an asset in your classroom by giving opportunities for failure and space for growth. Breakout EDU games are designed for healthy struggles, big wins, and even failures. 
To echo Michael Jordan, one of the top athletes in history, saying in his famous Nike commercial: "I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

Consider adding Breakout EDU into your instructional repertoire. Click here for a free trial of our games to witness the impacts of authentic equity and rigor in your classrooms.