Encouraging Failure to Promote Successby Jennifer Trainor

I often ask my graduate students, all of whom plan to be teachers, an unnerving question:  how will they set up their classrooms so that failure is rewarded?  The question forces us to confront our fears, and assumptions, about failure: “Wouldn’t that just encourage laziness or lack of effort?” the grad students ask. “Give students permission to give up?” 

A similar fear often governs our parenting.  A friend confides that she’s worried: if her daughter doesn’t do well in school, she’ll lose confidence, and decide she’s just not that academic.  Not only do we worry that failure will mar our children’s chances at future success. We also worry that it will mar their very identities, hurt their self-esteem, and create a self-fulfilling prophesy, an acceptance of failure.

But if an identity built on failure is a problem, much research suggests that its opposite – an identity built on successful performance – can be equally problematic.  What happens when the daughter who gets 100% on every math test encounters a problem she can’t solve? What happens when the son who writes teacher-pleasing essays every time encounters an audience who doesn’t offer him the instant gratification of praiseful reward?  The value of failure is that it teaches resilience and, if handled right, can nurture an identity based not on perfection but on the willingness to try, to problem-solve, to self-critique and try again. 

Without such an identity, a child will learn to avoid challenging tasks: she will run from circumstances that threaten her identity as a “good test-taker.”  She will avoid situations – a challenging assignment, a hard teacher, the next level in the workbook -- that threaten her ability to perform as a “good student.”  I know, because this is the process by which I became “math phobic” in school.  Having developed an identity as a “good student,” I couldn’t tolerate a situation that challenged it.  And so I did what perfectionists do:  I declared myself “not a math person,” and avoided the subject all the way through graduate school.

I see such performance-oriented perfectionism in the college freshman I teach.

“What should I say in the assignment?” a typical “successful” student will ask. “Is there a rubric that says what you’re looking for?”

In these questions, I see the symptoms of perfectionism:  Where the student needs risk-taking, he exhibits caution. Where he needs intellectual engagement, he seeks external rewards. Where he needs problem-solving skills, he looks for answers in an authority figure.  Eventually, he will turn in a perfectly executed but intellectually empty essay, and he will not get an A. 

Now here’s the damning part. It’s early in the semester and rather than ask questions about what went wrong and learn from the experience, he will drop the class and shop around for another, less challenging, less threatening to his identity.

So how do we encourage problem-solving, rather than perfectionism? How do we nurture a positive stance toward failure?  The experts tell us to focus on effort, not performance.  In one fascinating study, two groups of students were given a test. All did well, but half of the students were then told that they must be good test-takers; the other half that they must have worked hard.  When they were given another test, guess which group out-performed the other? Those who were praised for innate abilities gave up on questions they couldn’t easily answer. Those who were praised for effort kept trying, and succeeded. 

With my own children, I’ve learned to praise the attitude, not the innate attribute. “You love playing that song,” I say, rather than “You’re good at the piano.”

“You’re determined to figure it out” (not, you’re so smart).

“You’re dedicated to this game” (not, you’re a great player).

What would it mean to take this a step farther: to praise children for courage in the face of failure? To remind them that failures are generative – they lead to exploration, problem-solving, and learning? Such a step might seem counter-intuitive, but paradoxically, allowing for failure, even encouraging it, may set children on a path to true success.

Jennifer Seibel Trainor is the author "Rethinking Racism," (Southern Illinois University Press), as well as several essays on education. She teaches in the English department at San Francisco State University, and lives with her family in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Failure, Adversity, Perseverance, SUCCESS by Stephanie Rafanelli

A pack of ninth graders rush into my classroom and insist that I come to the girls’ bathroom as quickly as possible. One of their friends is sobbing and refusing to come out. Apparently, she has earned an A- on a quiz, her lowest grade ever. This bright and capable student is paralyzed by the idea of perceived “failure.”

Resilience and grit have been buzz words in both educational postings and the popular media recently. Resilience is the ability to recover from a challenging situation or set-back rather than being crushed by it. Grit is defined as:

perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit entails working strenuously toward challenges, maintaining effort and interest over years despite failure, adversity, and plateaus in progress.
[Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, and Kelly; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2007, Vol. 92, No. 6, 1087–1101]

Explicitly embedded in the definition of resilience and grit is failure. In fact, the only possible way to develop and then demonstrate these traits is through experiencing adversity. In elementary school, we do a better job of encouraging this process, whether it is the difficulty of swinging across the entire set of ‘monkey bars,’ processing a rejection from a friend, or mastering a list of new spelling words. While each event may seem small, the child learns something valuable about himself and about the world. Each of these “successful failures” is recalled as he approaches the next big challenge.

However, in middle and high school, several factors coincide to make academic failure particularly fraught. Uneven cognitive, emotional, and physical growth, a newly keen awareness of others’ perceptions, and seemingly higher stakes all combine in dramatic fashion. Failures seem more visible and more consequential. By keeping the long-term view firmly in mind, educators and parents can diffuse the trauma. Expectations ought to be explicit and multiple opportunities for revision and mastery should be standard. Growth and effort can be emphasized over a singular incident. Assessments should include process and an opportunity for self-reflection.

A poor grade on a history test may feel devastating in the moment. In all likelihood, your child will survive, learn something about how to better prepare for the next test, and practice moving on from disappointment. It is critical that our children practice these small, successful failures so they are better emotionally prepared for the more powerful experiences that lay ahead. When the student sobbing in the bathroom arrives at college, will she select classes based on ones she knows she can ace? Or will she challenge herself and then be devastated when she earns a C on an assignment? Will she be resilient enough to persist until she succeeds? Loss of a job, the break-up of a relationship, a family sickness – life is full of surprises and disappointments. A lifetime of “successful failures” allows us to develop grit.

Stephanie Rafanelli is both a school coach and a parent education facilitator for Challenge Success. Stephanie has been a middle school science and math teacher for nineteen years. In addition to almost two decades in the classroom, she has served as department chair, both academic and also grade level Dean, a parent and faculty educator, and a leader of curriculum reform. She has founded and run several summer and afterschool programs such as Sally Ride Science Camp for Girls and Menlo Summer Explorations. Stephanie is an educational consultant for multiple organizations. When she is not thinking about education, Stephanie is usually creating chaos with her three children.

COURAGEOUS PARENTING by Dr. Madeline LevineWhy Our Children Need Successful Failures:And Plenty of Them

Remember your toddler’s first steps. Remember how your child let go of your leg or the sofa edge or the playpen railing, and on legs so wobbly that locomotion seemed impossible, he or she moved to take a step towards you. And you crouched down so your eyes were level with your teetering toddler and held your arms out so that there was a safe harbor to fall into. You held your breath, your own limbs quivered and your face urged your child to go, to try, to take those first steps.

One. Two. Oops.

Down on his well-padded butt with a look of stricken surprise on his face. But you smiled broadly, clapped in delight and erased the fear from his eyes with your own laughing eyes. You urged him to get up again, to try again. And he did. Again and again. Up, standing, teetering, swaggering, walking, running. A million fall downs and a million get up and do it agains. These forays were some of your young child’s earliest failures. But they were also necessary, strengthening his motor coordination, his resolve and his confidence. Few of us think of this as failure, but if success is about mastery, then falling on your butt is about failure - necessary failure, imperative failure, successful failure. Because without these failures your child would never have learned how to walk, how to run, how to ride a bike, play lacrosse or soccer. It is the rule, rather than the exception, that failure precedes success.

Yet, as our kids grow, we become not simply less enthusiastic about their failures, but far less tolerant. A poor grade, a missed goal, a school rejection all become harbingers not of future success, but of inevitable failure. “I can’t believe you got a C on your math final. That means you won’t be placed in advanced algebra and you might as well forget about those fancy schools you want to go to.” “You’ve practiced that kick a hundred times, how could you miss it when it really counted? You’ll never make the traveling team now.” “What happened in your interview? Did you blow it? Should I just sign you up for community college now?” While all of these parenting responses sound harsh, they are unfortunately not unusual. Not because we are awful parents intent on stripping our children of whatever modicum of confidence they possess, but because we actually are frightened that our children will be cutting off their “options” when they stumble.

This perception that mistakes and failures become increasingly fatal as our children grow is reinforced when schools do not allow their students to redeem themselves when they have an inadequate grasp of content. It’s kind of crazy to think that your child takes a test, may do poorly for a million different reasons, and then is expected to go on to the next level of content without ever having had the opportunity to master the original content. As a writer, I can assure you that the first draft of a book, without the opportunity to rework each and every sentence, would be a poor substitute for a polished manuscript. This is how all of us learn. We put ourselves out there, try something just beyond our easy reach, learn from our mistakes and then can move on to even greater challenges. In education, this is called the “just right challenge.” In the just right challenge, your odds of success can be 50/50- Successful enough of the time to feel confident, unsuccessful enough of the time to be challenged. Otherwise we’d all still be reading “Dick and Jane” books (boy does that date me!)

The same is as true of psychological development as of educational development. If your daughter gets blown off in the cafeteria by her best friend Kayla and you run right over to “talk it over with the girls” or even worse tell your daughter “to forget about Kayla, she’s a terrible friend,” then you’re not allowing your daughter to learn the emotional components that can buffer failure. What happened between her and Kayla? Is there some way to remedy the situation? How does she handle disappointment? What may feel briefly like a social failure has the potential to help your daughter learn the repertoire of coping skills – collaboration, maintaining self-control, being curious, compromise - that she will need to navigate the inevitable disappointments and failures she will encounter in life.

This isn’t to say that a kid who fails more than he or she succeeds doesn’t need attention. If this is chronic, he probably does. But if we go back to the model of mom and her newly mobile toddler, we see the most effective way to encourage learning and confidence. Allow mistakes, encourage them, tolerate failure and make sure your child knows that it is the continued attempt, the effort, and the perseverance that you value most. Remember Thomas Edison’s advice, “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” Enthusiastically share your own successful failures with your kids. Let zest, not discouragement, drive your child’s learning.

The Right Fit vs. Collecting Colleges as Trophies: A Student's Perspective on College Applications

For me, the college applications process started early and finished late. And it was anything but easy. I “narrowed” my top choices to a list of 19, and I started mailing out my apps the summer before my senior year of high school. By the time that the school year had even started, I was already getting admissions letters in the mail. But 19 sounded absurd to me, even at the time. After all, wasn’t I only going to end up going to one? And this is only one example of the handful of likeminded questions that were running through my head. The more I considered it, the less it made sense. But at the same time there was something speaking louder, which I couldn’t resist: the pressure to conform.

I wanted to be a part of the college frenzy that was running rampant throughout my high school. I mean, it had started harmlessly enough—a few kids with Princeton shirts in middle school, rumors of summer camps at Duke—but by the time senior year rolled around, competition was so fierce that people didn’t even talk about where they were applying. In their eyes, every person who found out was just another number to compete against. So they kept their heads down, their mouths shut, and suddenly got very “busy” every weekend the SAT was offered, and got exponentially more frenzied the closer it got to the January 1^st deadline.

Nevertheless, it was an exciting time. Most students kept their lips sealed about their plans, but I could get a pretty good clear picture of the kinds of schools they were thinking of, and how big their dreams were. And this secrecy only fueled the competition. At least…it provided me the push I needed until crunch time…until I was about halfway through the process, and I still had a stack of ten apps on my desk, and midterms were just around the corner. Until I started to lose it.

But it actually wasn’t the workload which ended up bogging me down, nor was it the logistical balancing act that put me over the edge. It was the sincerity of the application questions themselves, which looked at me in the eye and openly asked me “why do you want to attend ___________?” And for many of the schools, I realized that I didn’t have an honest answer. Sure, it would be nice to get in, to get the thick envelope, and to be able to tell my friends and teachers about it in late March. But because there were so many schools on my list, (that I had skimmed off the top of the U.S. News and World Report rankings) the reality was that there were many that I wasn’t interested in attending, and many that probably weren’t interested in me. I realized that even if I somehow came up with a convincing answer to the question, the college itself might not really be a good match—that for four years I might be the only kid on campus who wasn’t actually excited to go there. Regardless of how good it might look on paper.

The college-crazy culture that I had been living in had only been feeding my delusions. Each raised eyebrow and incredulous “wow, nine-TEEN?” had only encouraged me to go out and collect colleges like trophies. So I made the tough decision to cut my list drastically—to only focus on the schools that I really had a good, honest answer for—regardless of whether or not they were the “brand name” schools. It was a hard decision to make, but it was better to make it in high school than to stretch out the drama, up the ante on the tension, or in the worst case scenario: to burn out and to lose my passion for learning at a school where I really didn’t belong.

FAST FORWARD FROM MARCH TO DECEMBERBy Stephanie Rafanelli

Remember that early parenting moment where your child falls and skins her knee for the first time and looks to you to gauge an appropriate response? Should I cry? Am I going to be OK? The calm, quietly attentive parent lets her daughter know, yes, there is a little blood and maybe even some stinging, but you will make it. We learn early that our child’s reactions will mirror ours. Our resolve or, alternately, panic, will become theirs.

Every March, a dozen or so former students wander back over to my middle school classroom to give me their college news. While most are ecstatic, there are always a few who are devastated. More often than not, these students point out that their parents are really disappointed. I wonder, is this a case of a parent’s panic being reflected through the student? Is the young adult really as dejected as he seems? Yes, college is more consequential than a skinned knee. Still, I have seen this student in action for years – conquering a difficult project, experiencing an unsuccessful student council bid, or maneuvering social upheaval. He has had practice in succeeding, failing, persevering, and staying engaged. I fundamentally believe he will be OK and probably thrive. Even at his second or third choice college.

Luckily, I have the December and January visits still fresh in my mind. Last year’s senior is now soaring as a freshman. “I am so excited about the language program – I can take classes in both French and English!” came the report from a student attending college in Canada. “I get to shadow the robotics team at a competition in April,” declared a pleased freshman now on the east coast. From a student in southern California, “I found ‘my people,’ Ms. Raf. Everyone I meet has some kind of combined major.” The angst of not being accepted at one particular college is forgotten as I am regaled by stories about the roommate, the lab schedule, or (my recent favorite) the great cafeteria food.

I know a skinned knee hurts. By now, your high school senior has had, hopefully, a few literal and metaphorical skinned knees, and she can understand both from your words and your loving support that she will survive. Ideally, your child has a network of adults – an advisor, past teachers, a coach – who can remind her of this message. Plant the seeds of next year’s conversation now – What drew her to the school to which she was accepted? What is she most looking forward to? Are there local alumni from that school who might be willing to meet for coffee? Who, among her teachers or advisors, will be excited for a full report in December? I, for one, can hardly wait to hear . . .

Stephanie Rafanelli is both a school coach and a parent education facilitator for Challenge Success. Stephanie has been a middle school science and math teacher for nineteen years. In addition to almost two decades in the classroom, she has served as department chair, both academic and also grade level Dean, a parent and faculty educator, and a leader of curriculum reform. She has founded and run several summer and afterschool programs such as Sally Ride Science Camp for Girls and Menlo Summer Explorations. Stephanie is an educational consultant for multiple organizations. When she is not thinking about education, Stephanie is usually creating chaos with her three children.

Courageous Parenting by Dr. Madeline LevineMARCH MADNESS

Every psychologist knows that there are certain times of the year when the phone starts ringing like mad. Winter holidays are one of those times when people’s hopes for idyllic family reunions often meets the reality of your uncle who drinks too much, your siblings who reliably don’t show up or your mother who thinks you married “down.”  Most of us in the mental health profession stay close to our offices between Christmas and New Years, anticipating teary, disappointed calls from adults who find, once again, that their Norman Rockwell visions have turned into Edvard Munch’s The Scream. For decades, this was the toughest time of year for both patients (well, many people actually) and therapists, when old hurts, disappointments and wounds unexpectedly reappeared, often taking center stage.

But times have changed and we have a new contender for the emotionally toughest time of year - and that is March - when college acceptances and rejections come in. What is profoundly different about this difficult time from what I described above is that, for the most part, it is unnecessary and fabricated not out of real trauma, but manufactured trauma. My phone rings this morning at 8AM (right after mail delivery) and a sobbing mother relates how her son was just rejected from “ the only school we wanted.” The first thing to note of course is the “we.”  I’m assuming it’s her son who is going to college and not the whole family. But like many of these phone calls, the bleeding between the needs of the high schooler and the needs of the parents, practically needs a tourniquet. Parents are beside themselves about rejections that are incidental to their children; children are beside themselves about disappointing their parents. The normal level of excitement and disappointment that one would expect at this point is so out of proportion to the reality of what it means to go to Wisconsin instead of Michigan, Georgetown instead of Princeton, Santa Cruz instead of UCLA or Sonoma State instead of San Jose State as to defy easy explanation. So here’s my best shot at what is really going on during March Madness.

First of all, we’ve come to believe that where our children go to college will have a profound impact on how their lives turn out. There are companies that “guarantee” admission to a prestigious college if you start working with them while your child is still a toddler. Many schools begin college preparation in 6^th grade and even more in 9^th. This emphasis lets our children (and ourselves) know early and regularly that high school and even childhood are staging areas for something that will happen years, even decades later. In fact, both childhood and adolescence have a whole bunch of requirements of their own that have nothing to do with where your child ultimately goes to college. Long before that happens, they need to show self-control, get interested in themselves and the world, know how to talk and work with other people and reflect on their future selves. Premature focus on college takes away much needed time from the tasks and skills that kids need to master in order to go on and be successful college students, and then successful adults.

So does the college that your child goes to matter? Yes, of course. But not necessarily in the way we’ve become accustomed to thinking about it. Colleges and universities matter when they fit well with the needs, interests and temperament of your child. The child who thrives in a big social setting is unlikely to do well in a small rural school. The child who loves structure, may struggle with a school where there are few requirements. College is a match, not a prize. We have our eye on the wrong ball when we care most about the “ranking” of the college our child goes to. Academically talented kids, for the most part, go to competitive schools. But these handful of top schools can fill their classes many times over with bright kids. No kid should feel like a failure (another typical March phone call - a crying youngster who won’t get out of bed saying “I did everything right and it was for nothing.”) It is a tragedy to have high performing kids feel like failures when they don’t get into the toughest schools. It is equally a tragedy to marginalize kids who go to community colleges.  “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future,” said Yogi Berra. Few of us have walked a straight and narrow path to “success.”  Many of us have changed focus, schools and careers. We should know better. There are few individual things that will determine our life’s trajectory. Life is simply more complex than that. No school guarantees success in life and no school eliminates it.

Instead of crying over rejections, we should be celebrating acceptances with our kids in March. Of course going to a high-ranking school may carry potential advantages. But an Ivy League study showed that there were no ultimate differences in workplace success or satisfaction among students who were accepted to Ivy League schools and attended and those who were accepted but didn’t go there. Ultimately it is your child’s life. The best guarantees of success for our children - not at the end of the grading period, not when they get into college - but twenty years down the line when they move into their adult lives, have to do with real involvement with learning (not just going through the motions,) a good emotional foundation and good values. Their college acceptances have nothing, or little, to do with your parenting. This is about your child. And they should feel good about moving towards one of the greatest transitions in their lives. Wherever your kid gets into college this month, go out and celebrate. This is how you share without bleeding. 

Courageous ParentingThere’s So Much Pressure.Do We Really Have A Choice? by Dr. Madeline Levine

Hi. Welcome to Courageous Parenting. Since you don’t know me yet, and I don’t know you, let’s start with a brief introduction. I’m Madeline Levine, co-founder of Challenge Success and author of the NYT bestseller, The Price of Privilege. I’ve been a clinical psychologist working mostly with teens and parenting issues for the past 30 years (Making me sound rather old. Probably an advantage to you since I’ve either lived through or treated most of the things that you are likely to be worried about.)

I’ve thought long and hard about whether our current high-stakes, high-pressure culture is here to stay. Most of us seem to be participating in this culture, often in multiple ways, and just as often, against our better judgment. We worry about the schools our children attend. Are they rigorous enough? Have we done enough to give our kids a “leg up?” We hover over homework, track test scores, push for competitive sports and keep our children endlessly busy with extracurriculars. While all of these topics will be discussed in great detail over the coming months let’s start with what the research says. I’ll then tell you what my experience has taught me.

Kids do not benefit from excessive stress (period!) That’s not to say that having your kid do his homework, or grounding him for an infraction or insisting on chores is too much to ask of “vulnerable” children. Kids for the most part are robust and resilient. We take that strength away from them when we add stress that is out of synch with the well-documented needs of kids. Homework into the night, depriving kids of the sleep that they need for optimal brain development, is out of synch with healthy development and therefore damaging. So is insisting on near perfect grades, outstanding athletic achievement or building water plants in third world countries to beef up college resumes. Kids thrive at the “just right” challenge. That is when they are challenged just beyond their current level of competence. Not when they’re expected to act like rocket scientists, professional athletes or adults.

Actually, a body of research tells us that our kids are most likely to do well, both academically and emotionally when we are aware of their strengths and weaknesses; help them cultivate those strengths and compensate for those weaknesses. When we see them clearly. When we love them unconditionally and still set limits and impose consequences when called for. When we are alert for signs of excessive stress like headaches and stomachaches. And when we do see signs, are quick to protect our children by looking at both our own contribution as well as their schools’ contribution.

But often the pressure seems to be overwhelming. Getting into the “right” school starts to feel (mistakenly) like a matter of life and death. We become “night teachers” working into exhaustions (for both us and them) so that they turn in perfect work (and lose the opportunities to learn from mistakes.) We neglect to make sure that our kids are getting the mandatory “down time” to think, dream, and reflect on their future selves. Instead we pack their days with a schedule befitting a junior leaguer or a CEO.

This isn’t what kids need. They need what kids have always needed. Love, limits, support, unpressured time, goals to reach for and a sense of having something to contribute.

Challenge Success has many goals. To improve best practices in school, to lessen developmentally inappropriate demands on kids, to insure that they learn to make healthy choices, to support parents. But our guiding principle is that every child is unique and has the potential to contribute to himself, his family and his community. There are many ways to be successful in this world and our sons and daughters need to be fully aware that a good life can come just as easily from being a pianist, a teacher, a nurse or a venture capitalist. It’s what’s inside that counts. Every day, parents come up against choices that are tough to make. Do you encourage your son to turn down the traveling soccer team even when he’s earned a spot? Do you choose the play preschool over the one known for it’s academic rigor? Does your child skip chores because there’s a big test coming up? Most of these questions have relatively simple answers.* Challenge Success is here to help you navigate through some of the thornier calls we need to make. So am I.

Comments, questions, proposed topics and criticism are all equally welcome.

*Depending on your son’s age, his athletic involvement should be up to him. That doesn’t mean that you need to give up family life. If the team demands that you do, I’d think twice.

Play-based preschools have kids, who on average, do better academically down the line than academic preschools.

Much more to be learned from completing a chore and discharging a responsibility than from a few extra minutes of more studying.