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Failure
Failure
In this episode, we arrive at an inevitable part of the process of learning: failure. But do students understand that failure is inevitable at some, or many, points?
This episode is a three-way conversation between your host, STEM advisor William Golston, and professor of Political Science TJ Kimel. Together, we compare experience with failure in education and our two guests talk about how they engage with student failure by talking about their own.
We'll ask a lot of questions and explore possibilities that working in higher education both opens up and closes down.
What does it mean that failure is inevitable? What can we offer students who are currently failing or that have failed in the past? How can we understand each other's work and biography better to help each other and students?
Join us to begin the kind of conversation we think could open up some important possibilities in teaching students to learn how to learn.
Listen to Episode 6
Listen to Episode 6
Listen here or stream through Apple Podcasts or Spotify.
Sharing Biography and Perspective
Sharing Biography and Perspective
Both of our guests this episode share their own experiences of failure with their students at times when hearing this story can have a big impact. Increasing numbers of faculty and staff have been choosing to share their own experience when they feel it would do a student good.
Choosing to share one's own story has a powerful effect in teaching and learning. Our conversation also shows that they people telling their own stories come to greater insight about their own experience as well.
What stories do you share of your biography and how many of them are about failure?
Grief and Convalescence In Higher Education
Grief and Convalescence In Higher Education
It must be said that any practical and concrete support faculty and staff can offer students who are experiencing failure must take into account the student's emotion around that failure. Our conversation puzzled over the place for grief in higher education and where students might go to, as Will put it, "convalesce." As we think about perhaps making new spaces for the grief of failure, we should address student grief thoughtfully.
Talking with our Counseling staff can be a first supportive step for students - but also for faculty and staff as they think about supporting students. Contact the Counseling staff if you have questions about a particular student who is struggling with failure or to talk in general about strategies when we encounter strong student emotion.
Strategies for Learning from Failure
Strategies for Learning from Failure
Here is an article from the Harvard Business Review that is related to some of the findings our guests at the college talked about in their own practice. It codifies a few steps for helping students see failure in constructive ways.
This articles doesn't engage with grief over failure, which is an important component when helping students handle failure. We suggest using this article's strategies only in conjunction with close attention to a student's emotional needs and capacity at the times when you are working with them.
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