Acknowledging "Failure": Transparency is Tough

Today, I attempted to express to my students my suspicion that an ongoing project has outlived its usefulness before we could make it to "the end." But my students witnessed more than a teacher suggesting we head for the escape hatch.  In a larger sense, what my students have been witnessing the whole semester is the difficult process of creating a class dedicated to using technology for meaningful learning experiences.  As they can see, it’s messy.  

But it's more than creating the class. While attempting to structure a course that it is authentic, useful, and fun, I am also in the midst of rethinking much of what I thought I knew about teaching.  Which is scary.  After all, I entered a profession that functions according to some pretty entrenched beliefs; I tried to map these out for them in class:

I have the information, which I impart to my students.  Along the way, I create a number of activities to gauge how well you are understanding the information.  Finally, I establish a way for you to demonstrate mastery.  And we do this within an established timeframe: three weeks for a novel, for example.  Then the process repeats itself with the next discrete unit of information.  Clearly, the teacher is in charge and it is a closed system in which the communication of ideas moves between teacher and student, but rarely ever extends beyond it.  To a large degree, education still functions like this.

However, as I have learned more about how to foster creativity and how people use technology to engage in meaningful learning, this model feels less genuine, less purposeful, and less acceptable.  Yet, like my students, I have been trained extensively in this system and have learned my role well. Disrupting it has required some serious cognitive dissonance for all involved.  

And this is why I get concerned when the project we have invested the past four weeks into suddenly stalls out.  Projects aren’t supposed to stall out.  They are supposed to end when the paper has been collected, the speech has been given, the grade has been assessed.  To acknowledge that the “Designing a Learning Environment” project might be over before those aforementioned actions have taken place feels like failure, like I am abdicating my responsibility as a teacher.

I mentioned to my students that I saw educator Jim Sill at the Illinois GAFE Summit last week.  On Thursday, 3/28, it was so easy to nod along with his pronouncement that creating a culture of creativity requires risk and failure, and that sometimes, in such a class, one must accept that there is no tangible endpoint to projects: the process becomes the end in itself. On 3/28, this was invigorating.

But it became considerably harder to accept on Monday, 4/1, while standing in front my students.  

I suggested that they place post-its on the board with comments about what the project helped them to learn or at least see in a new way. They made prescient statements about learning, and how school needs to be more flexible to allow students to explore their passions. They understood the importance of considering the size and scope of a proposed change to the education system--that it's not possible to go for it all at once. They even suggested that those groups who are passionate continue working on their projects, and that maybe students from disbanded groups could assist them in some way. So, yes, the four weeks provided them with some thought-provoking moments. But damn if I didn't feel like a fraud.

I could only tell my students to bear with me and try to enjoy the ride. After all, few of them have had the opportunity to be involved in the creation of a brand new class.  I know I have not.  I could only assure them that I am constantly thinking about what will best serve them and me as we try to make sense of how technology changes the ways that we learn, create, and communicate.  This transparency is unnerving.