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THE SECRET TO SUCCESS IS FAILURE???
People don’t generally like to fail. It’s embarrassing. It feels unproductive. It can leave an icky feeling inside.
What if I told you that some of the most successful people in the world believe that the secret to success is failure?
Read this article about what Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) said to Ian Freed, the project leader of the Amazon Fire Phone. After Freed led a team of over 1,000 employees and spent over $170 million dollars to develop Amazon’s first smartphone, the public regarded the Fire Phone as a huge disappointment and Amazon stopped sales of the Fire Phone just over a year after its release. What do you think Bezos said to Freed after this huge failure?
“You can’t, for one minute, feel bad about the Fire Phone. Promise me you won’t lose a minute of sleep,” Bezos told Freed.
Bezos understood that the bigger picture in the journey to success is dotted with failures along the way. He knew that failure has to be a part of growth.
“If the size of your failures isn’t growing, you’re not going to be inventing at a size that can actually move the needle,” says Bezos.
The technology in Freed’s failed Fire Phone ultimately led to the development of the hugely successful Amazon Echo and Alexa. Bezos was invested in his people and invested in the process of experimenting, failing, and growing from mistakes.
So what does this have to do with math and learning?
What if someone gave you permission to fail as a part of your journey towards growth?
What if someone went as far as to say that failures as a necessary part of growth, learning and of eventual success?
Would that shift your mindset about the learning process?
In math class, teachers sometimes give “exit tickets” after a lesson. While no one enjoys finding out that they got problems wrong, that information does serve a very important purpose. It informs the student of what they need to improve upon. The exit ticket is not meant as a quiz or a test, its purpose is to identify potential weakness and spur growth.
The hope of the 8th grade math team is that embarrassment and bad feelings aren’t a regular part of your learning experience in class. Mistakes, confusion, frustration, and even failure are part of the journey of learning, but they should not bring your journey to a screeching halt. Instead, failure should be followed by an exciting period of growth - that’s what leads to learning and success!!
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