Overview:
Teachers build trust, engagement, and resilience in students by modeling failure, accepting vulnerability, and turning mistakes into learning opportunities.
I am a teacher who is also on the autism spectrum. Being hearing impaired and learning disabled, my teaching style will definitely be different. I also have a Master’s degree with a focus on behavioral science, this leads to a tendency to analyze results. One result that was particularly important came from learning model failure. It was through learning to fail that I developed new ways to build trust with my students. By taking risks and allowing my mistakes to be seen, my students are more engaged. When perfection was not required, a new passion for learning was born.
One of the positions I got early in my career was as a professor in a classroom at a special institution. This school is designed to serve students who cannot participate in regular education classes due to the severity of their disabilities and associated challenging behaviors. It is in this setting that I became more interested in how different forms of engagement work to reduce the likelihood of challenging behavior. When working with special students who exhibit complex behaviors, prompt action is essential. Things like humor, vulnerability, and honesty; he can build relationships. In my experience, it is important to integrate this into everyday practices, with all students, in all settings.
Although my experience is focused on a different area of education, the strategies I use are not limited to special learners. Most were taught by my mother, a retired kindergarten teacher. I grew up spending afternoons in the classroom with my mother, preparing lessons, making materials, designing bulletin boards. As I got older I became more active in his class. At one point, he worked at the campus I attended as a student, a K-12 charter school. I was a teacher’s assistant long before I became a teacher. My mother imitated many of these techniques, and I used them in a unique situation. Their success in all settings reflects their value.
It was at a special campus for special students that I first met Alan*. A student in one of the high school classes, Alan was frighteningly tall. He was a tall man with athletic ability, and he could pack a punch. And pack the punch he had, the school year before I came. Alan is well known for the injuries he caused to staff, including his teacher’s broken nose. He was the type of student that you always looked out for and always looked out for safety. However, with Alan, like many of his peers, humor creates a way to engage. If I cracked a joke in class and Alan laughed, it was a sign that he was really engaged and learning. Laughter from the back of the room has been a tool I can use to measure attention and engagement. In this setting, that also equates to safety.
Alan was one of my students who had limited abilities and often chose to fall asleep in class. He was not alone in that. The class was full of students who did not like to study. As high school students with limited academic ability, their cumulative academic history was not marked by success. These are students who have failed and do not expect to succeed in the future. That was about to change. By learning to make mistakes in front of my students, and modeling how to deal with not knowing the answer, I build trust. My classroom became a place where there was no risk of failure; failure was an acceptable option. However, it was not like giving up.
As someone with dyslexia, my spelling skills are poor. In writing this paragraph, spell check has already corrected me twice. I was very skeptical when I first started working with students on reading and spelling skills, but I went into it with honesty and humility. It makes a difference. The day the situation changed for me and my students, it was the day we realized that together we could spell the refrigerator to save our lives. All we can do is laugh at our mistakes and fix them together. Refrigerator, spell check to save again.
As part of the spelling lesson, I was giving my students a test. The word refrigerator was universally missed (including me). However, the art and humor of the written spell was fun. When I glanced at the answer pages, I saw several “refrigerators”. The concept image associated with this creative spell was one of the world’s most versatile appliances that could refrigerate, fry, maybe even sautee. Jokingly, I told my students that I thought they had come up with a new creative idea. And although neither I nor my students could spell refrigerator correctly, I saw great potential in the “re-fry-gerator” technology. Alan, who was usually a sleeper so far in the course, was laughing and talking about how clever we were at doing it all. In fact, everyone was smiling and laughing.
My reading and spelling lessons became a place where even the teachers made mistakes. No one was wrong, and we all took it for granted. What I considered one of my greatest weaknesses, dyslexia, became one of my greatest strengths. The fact that I was willing to make mistakes with my students, handle them with grace, and learn was more impactful than any other course I taught. Alan, along with his peers, are always busy academically. The sleepy eyes that greeted me at first were replaced by joy and eagerness to learn. What I naturally did as a speller was a way to communicate and engage.
When I didn’t know or misspelled a word, I was honest. When a subject I thought would be a big hit, I was honest. I let my students know that it didn’t work out as planned; some things don’t. I modeled what it looks like so I don’t have an answer. Not to understand, but to ask questions and find out. Together, as a group, we gained skills. We supported each other and faced obstacles with humor and patience.
As teachers, we are also human. We have days when things don’t go as planned. My mother survived 30 years of teaching kindergarten by learning to laugh at herself and her mistakes. If mistakes are made, a word is misspelled, the page number is wrong, a lamination disaster, or another hiccup in teaching, there is room at that time to teach a different lesson. There is room for modeling failure and how to handle situations that don’t go our way. By doing so you build a relationship of trust with your students, who in turn gain the confidence to face challenges and risk failure.
Learning to allow our faults to be seen and not remove them before notice. Learning to face failure. Learning to be vulnerable. Learning to say “well, that didn’t work”. These are things we need to model for our students. Show how to fail and how to persevere. The best teachers, in my opinion, are the ones we see as most people. Part of that is learning to laugh at our mistakes and fail miserably, gracefully.
