Hello everyone, I hope all is well with you. I’m back today with another Slice of Life Post. Today, I’m talking about dealing with failure. In my opinion, failure is just a stepping stone to success, but not everyone feels this way.
The event that brought this subject to light is the Battle of the Books at my son’s school. This is an event, where students read a number of books approved by their librarian. When the students have read ten books from this approved list, they’re eligible to participate in The Battle of the Books. This is where they answer questions on the content they’ve read. I watched it poised with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to see those young eager minds answer questions from the books they’d read.
I watched as these kids nervously picked at their fingernails or bit their lips. I’d forgotten how scary it can be to answer questions in front of a panel of adults and your peers. Not to mention the humiliation they must’ve felt when they didn’t answer correctly. I remembered how intense those emotions can be.
It was a crushing event for one young man and my heart went out to him and that’s when I realized young people need to learn they can survive failing. It’s not the end all drama that they imagine it to be. It’s a painful lesson and we as parents need to remember that as we guide our littles through life.
After all, it took Thomas Edison one thousand attempts before he got the light bulb right. Then there’s J.K. Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series, who was rejected by twelve different publishers before Bloomsbury Publishing accepted it. This series went on to earn over four hundred million dollars and made Rowling the first female billionaire author.
We’re very fortunate Thomas Edison and J.K. Rowling didn’t give up, they persevered and our world is better for it. We need to teach this to our kids, this belief in their dreams. We need to teach them everyone fails before they get it right. If we don’t, what will the future be like?
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You are absolutely right. It may be more important to learn how to learn from the lessons of not winning than to actually win a contest itself. Because life is more the striving than the momentary success.
You’re so right, Bernadette! Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
We start Battle of the Books the first week of February. This is my first time running it at middle school. It was always hard to see kids fail when I did it in elementary school, especially the third graders, who were so excited about it. But we’d talk over what they’d do next time to do better. It is important to learn how to fail.
I agree Adrienne, we learn more from our failures than we do our successes! I enjoyed watching the competition, but felt compassionate toward the ones who struggled. 🙂 That part was hard to watch.
We need to teach this to our kids, this belief in their dreams. We need to teach them everyone fails before they get it right.
I think that this is sadly missing in our teaching lives these days, sadly so for our kids.
I agree Tara. It seems the teachers are bogged down with testing and organizing data that they don’t get to invest their time in inspiring dreams.
Last year we taught a unit on perseverance and the kids all read different biographies. I think they were surprised just how much their “heroes” actually failed and what they had to overcome to become the people they are/were. It is definitely a unit I want to do again.
Thanks for stopping by Leigh Anne. I think it’s an important lesson to learn. When I found out how many times one of our heroes failed, I was surprised too. It’s good to know because it certainly puts things in perspective and encourages all of us not to give up. 🙂
A very important topic! 🙂
Thanks for stopping by Erik. My Beta Reader just finished my YA thriller. She liked it. 🙂 I just have to make some tweaks! 🙂