All my life, failure has been a negative thing.  I strive for excellence and failing was certainly not excellent in my opinion.

But in the past few months, I have been seeing more and more examples of how failure can truly make you better– and in most cases, better off than if you succeeded the first time.

As I watch my 19-month old constantly trying new things, she is not discouraged by failure.  The block tower falls over and I immediately say, “Uh ohhhh,” prepared to console my toddler after all the work she put into her creation.  But she looks at me as if she wasn’t so worried about it!  Then she proceeds to gather the blocks and rebuild– this time, with the bigger blocks on the bottom.

She stammers over to her table with a cup of grapes and loses balance, tipping the grapes to the ground.  I hold my breath, feeling sorry for my dear daughter and her favorite snack.  But without a second thought, she picks up each grape, delighting in the fact that she gets to put them back in the cup one at a time. (We have a five-second rule in our house.)

This theme has translated into my work life as well.  Offering challenges where children are going to fail and fail again before they might succeed (and might not!) teach students that failure might be a friend.  The STEAM challenges I have led in my classroom and the activities in their iHub class, in particular, are windows into this type of learning.  Students try to meet the challenge and often fail, have to pick themselves up again, and go down another path.  The lessons they learn from these experiences help them with empathy– they pick up a classmate when his or her project didn’t go as planned.  They also teach students that it’s okay to make mistakes.  Mr. Kevin explained it well a few weeks ago saying, “You want to fail.  If you fail, you know exactly where you need to focus, where you need to improve.”

New opportunities arise when something doesn’t go the way it should.  Failure is our chance to try it again– not something we should fear.

Learner, Thinker, Writer: Kathy Bruyn serves the Trinity School community as a Second Grade Lead Teacher.

I’m starting to realize just how important the digital camera is to an elementary classroom.  It might just be more important than pencils.  Well, maybe not… but you know what I’m saying.

“One picture is worth ten thousand words.” – Chinese proverb

If that philosopher was still around today, I’m sure he’d have a digital camera in his hands.

Children love taking pictures as much as they love being in them.   Allowing students access to a digital camera throughout their day can help them document their world from their perspective—and it’s amazing what you will find when you look through their camera roll!

Here are some ways to utilize this fabulous tool in your classroom!

• To showcase learning – Ask your students to take pictures of all the nouns, geometric shapes, etc. they can find in the classroom—or even the whole school!
• To share with the world – Share on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram—or your classroom PhotoBucket account.
• To track progress – Take “before,”  “during,” and “after” pictures during a long-term project.  This proves to students how much progress they’ve made!  Use “before” photos for self-reflection during a student-led conference to show where they used to be with a particular skill.
• To “save” a project or capture a thought – How many times do you have to say, “Time to put away the blocks, puzzle, etc.”?  Capture their creation with a digital photo and your students will be much happier to clean up!
• To practice observation and understand perspective – Task a student with being the class photographer for the week.  See what he or she thinks is interesting enough to capture on camera.  You’ll be surprised at what activities and lessons are included!

Happy picture-taking!

Learner, Thinker, Writer, and Photographer: Kathy Bruyn serves Trinity School as a Second Grade teacher.  You can follow her on Twitter @KathyEE96.

The highlight of last week in Second Grade was definitely our community service visit to Sheltering Arms preschool.  It was an eye-opening experience for students to learn of the others’ unfortunate circumstances, but it was an equally monumental experience for me.

After being spread out into 5 classrooms, the teachers of the preschool immediately assigned my students to lead activities such as planting seeds, reading Dr. Suess books, and designing bookmarks.  I quickly felt a sense of freedom.  I was not in charge.  I was not assigned.  I was only there to simply capture the experience through photos and video and to observe.  I enjoyed stepping back and watching how the Second Graders handled being thrown into a classroom full of strangers to teach!  But they fared well.  They played dress-up, raced cars, cooked and grocery shopped, and cut out construction paper– they had a blast!  Unlike the experience a high school or adult volunteer would have, the Second Graders did not have to “pretend to enjoy” the activities– they truly did.  This was apparent in both the three-year-old reactions all morning and in my students’ My Learning reflections that afternoon.

I kept on asking myself, “Why was I so impressed?” “Did I not expect them to participate and lead?”  I think it was because all year long, I never stepped back (for more than a few minutes) and had the pure freedom to observe.  Somewhere in those Second Grade brains, the executive function of regulation had been developing all year long.  Regulation involves evaluating the available information and modulating your responses to the environment.  They knew how to talk to a class of youngsters.  They knew how to reconcile an argument over markers, how to fairly pass out stickers, how to kneel down to a three-year-old’s level, how to stop and ask for predictions while reading to a class.

To say that I was impressed would be an understatement.  My students blew me away with their calm demeanor, careful words, and leadership skills.  I’m so blessed I had the chance to step back and observe!

Learner, Thinker, Writer, Observer:  Kathy Bruyn serves the Trinity School community as a Second Grade teacher.

Everyone makes mistakes.  Unless you go through life never trying anything new, you are bound to make a mistake.  In addition, the more responsibility you take on, the more apt you are to make mistakes. The trick is to use those mistakes to propel you forward.

But this is easier said than done.  You can only learn from a mistake after you admit to making it.  An average person’s first instinct is to blame someone else or ask, “Why me?”  But doing this just distances yourself from any possible lesson you can learn from the mistake.

In my classroom, mistakes happen all the time.  Erasers on the ends of pencils are worn down to the metal.  A Cheeze-it falls to the ground and within seconds gets stomped into the carpet.  A raised hand answers a question incorrectly.  Papers are handed in with worn down spots where a thought has been scribbled, erased, and scribbled again.  Extra or too few copies are made.  We forget to turn out our lights and get busted by Watt Watchers.

It’s hard to focus on the good that can come from mistakes even as an adult, so challenging my students to see the benefits is even more difficult.  However, if a student can say, “This is my mistake and I am responsible,” even if only privately to themselves, they can start to understand what they can do to prevent it from happening again.

The “mistake jar” is a place in my classroom where we collect proof that we are taking risks.  Teachers and students fill the jar with a marble each time we identify and take responsibility for a mistake we make.  When the jar is full, we celebrate.  We celebrate because we put ourselves in situations where we can make interesting mistakes.   We celebrate because we have the self-confidence to admit to them.  We celebrate because we have the courage to make changes according to what we learn.

It’s not easy to admit you’ve made a mistake, but it’s an essential step in growing, learning, and improving yourself.

Learner, Thinker, Writer:  Kathy Bruyn serves the Trinity School Community as a Second Grade Teacher.

http://www.pbase.com/csw62/image/51957207

So, it’s about half way through January.  Who has kept their New Year’s resolution so far?

According to a study from the Psychology Department at the University of Scranton, only 75% of people maintained their resolution through the first week of January last year.   What happened to the 25% who couldn’t even make it through a week?!

The percentage of people who maintained their resolution dropped to 64% by February, and further plummeted to 46% half way through the year.  Only 8% of people surveyed were actually successful in achieving their new year’s resolution.

That’s encouraging!

Reading these numbers helped me to see that I may need some checkpoints along the way.  What if I create smaller goals for myself each month?  What if I start small in January, and work my way up towards a bigger goal by December?  This might make it less overwhelming, and I might have a chance of landing in the 8% who succeed as 2013 comes to an end.

Every afternoon, I ask my students to reflect on their day—what they did well, what they could try to improve for the next day.   As a teacher, I realize that students need lots of checkpoints to achieve a trimester goal.

If I know that this is what is best for my students, I should use that same thought when it comes to my own goals.  I will begin to give myself an opportunity to feel good about each day that passes– or to reflect on what I can do better the next day.

Learner, Thinker, Writer: Kathy Bruyn teaches Second Grade at Trinity School.