Encourage Growth Through Failure

Redesigning for K–2

A few of the preceding points deserve clarification for K–2 educators. Please see the following. • Concerning safety: Cardboard cutters are sharp and dangerous. But paper is thin and hard to build with. As a compromise, I suggest using your standard classroom scissors and cereal boxes. Cereal box cardboard is sturdy enough to build with but won’t break little scissors when cut. I did not come up with this idea; a secondgrade teacher I work with did. Use the experience and help of those around you when you don’t know. • Concerning project timing: I maintain that our smaller students can also judge this, but the teacher should directly teach this to them by modeling the questions students should ask themselves and creating (read: having students create) a question anchor chart featuring questions like, “Can I show the teacher how this works? What was my goal, and does this do that? Will this work multiple times? Do I know why every part exists?”

Encourage Growth Through Failure

Things change during the build phase. Design thinkers embrace this. Students learning design thinking worry about this and follow their designs either too closely or not at all. Early in the school year, when your students are still learning to think like designers, they might see blueprints more as hoops to jump through than as tools integral to the final product. They’ll think this way no matter what you say as you introduce blueprints and go over them. Students will draw blueprints because you say they have to so they can get to the fun parts: cutting and gluing and measuring (if they remember). That’s OK.

Yes, it’s OK that students will see their blueprints as hoops to jump through at first. It’s OK that the first time they build something, most—if not all—of them will completely forget about their blueprints about five minutes into the excitement and adrenaline of the building process, and freestyling will ensue. It’s OK because those builds will be, almost without exception, bad. Early student builds are nearly always bad. They fall down. They are fragile. They look terrible. They are laminated in packing tape. They’re uneven, and they just barely solve the problem stated at the start of the process.

This illustrates what we in the ed biz call natural consequences. Teachers who teach design thinkers never say, “I told you so.” Instead, we say, “How closely did you follow your blueprint?” or “Can you talk me through the steps of your design process?” When students are still learning to be designers, they are usually able to explain the thinking behind a part of their build they are excited about but completely unable to articulate any clear thinking behind another part. So, ask direct questions like, “It seems to me the problem in your build is stability. When did you notice it tends to fall over, and where in your process did you address the problem?” If the class is feeling fragile, which happens because failure is hard, craft feedback such as the following to guide the students closer to their goal while respecting their autonomy.

“I see you’ve put a lot of thought into the overall look of your build. It looks great, and it’s clear what you’re trying to make. When it’s placed under certain kinds of stress, like when the table is bumped or when you try to make this part move, it all kind of goes sideways. Have you thought about other internal structures or shapes—[cough] triangles [cough]—that might make it stronger without ruining the nice outside design you’ve got going on? You’ve got the time. I know you can figure this out. Feel free to take a walk around the room and check out other builds if you need some inspiration.”

Guidance such as this clarifies the idea that failure is good so students can understand it easily. I don’t teach formal lessons on grit, which is Angela Duckworth’s (2016) term for the perseverance and dedication to long-term goals. I also don’t directly teach students about growth mindset or use its concepts to organize my classroom, but I do try to keep them in mind (Dweck, 2016). People with a growth mindset believe they earn skills through good habits, regular practice, and constructive criticism from others, while people with a fixed mindset have a kind of “you get what you’ve got” mentality about skills, meaning they are born with innate abilities and should learn to live with their limits (Dweck, 2016). While teachers don’t commonly walk students through the concepts of growth mindset and grit, these concepts can help teachers recognize when students are bummed because they failed at something they were excited to do. By applying a growth mindset in themselves and encouraging it in students, teachers will know when students need assurance that they can be successful, and teachers will learn how to recognize the confidence that comes in the beat after failure.

Students who are good at “playing school” know the rules and the tricks and have never really struggled with school. They come at building projects like they do every other school assignment: with a confidence born of good grades and lots of praise. Then the wall of their build won’t stay up, or the wheels fall off for the seventeenth time. They get frustrated. They get worried they’re not going to pass, even though no one has mentioned grades. You don’t want students thinking about grades. You want them thinking about

whether their build solves the problem. That’s all. The grade—hold on, come closer as I whisper this: “The grade does not matter.” When it comes time to show off their build, some students will be embarrassed because they think they failed. That’s when you get to help them see all the value in what they did. That’s when you get to do more teaching.

Redesigning for K–2

H ere, K–2 teachers may have a leg up on grades 3–5 teachers. Their students have less to unlearn about what school “should” be, which may make their transition to being design minded easier. This will help the students who might have otherwise adopted an “I’m good at school” mindset.

A bad build is a failure students can see, but it doesn’t hurt. A bad build is so much easier for students to understand than a bad essay or a missed mathematics problem or a boring presentation. It’s right there in front of them, falling apart and looking sad.

But it’s not the last build they’ll do. It might not even be the last time they’ll do this specific build. The very first build project in my class is a quick build I call wind-powered cars. (See chapter 8, page 119, for details.) The short guide to this build is to “make a wind-powered car.” Many of these cars fail. But sometime after winter break, as a fun interjection between all the big tests at the end (of the semester, unit, or lesson, whatever cumulative test students are anticipating), we revisit this build, and students get a second crack at those wind-powered cars. The second crack turns out so much better. Cars roll. They roll straight. They roll far. There’s cheering. There’s evidence of learning and growth clearer than any big test at the end can offer.

Thinking Like a Designer

In the build phase, reinforce the lesson you’ve been communicating throughout the year: it’s OK to be bad at first. Encourage students to make the second build better using what they learned from the bad build.

Students have successfully internalized design thinking when they no longer need teacher approval of an idea before they try it. They should still ask for help with small things or general advice, but if they have an idea and it’s not completely outlandish, they should be confident enough in their thinking as a designer to try it. A designer does