A few weeks ago, I attended a fundraising dinner for a rescue mission in my area, which supported homeless men. I’ve attended this event for the past few years, and each time the chosen speaker from the mission would share inspiring stories of the recovery and success of some of the men they’ve supported. These stories were encouraging, captivated the audience, and inspired them to continue to support the mission. They would also share statistics of all the meals and beds they provided, and all the great programs they were running. These were awesome stories of success! But this year was different. This year, the speaker began by sharing three stories of tragedy. Three stories of men, that despite their best efforts, they were unable to help. The end of each story resulted in death or long-term imprisonment. The speaker shared these stories to share the reality of what they do. The reality that sometimes they fail. That despite all  the work, all the heart invested, all the tears, that sometimes, they still fail. I don’t share this story of failure to damage our hope or resolve, but to encourage us not to be afraid or ashamed of our failures.

Our Reality

In education, it seems it is never okay to admit that we will fail some of our students. I use the term “fail” in reference to the reaching the goals we want to accomplish with all of our students. The reality is that all of our efforts, interventions and supports will not be enough for some students. The reality is that some things are beyond our ability to support. So when this happens, it can create shame and feelings of failure among teachers and administrators. As a principal, I’ve recently experienced situations where we’ve felt like we did everything in our power to help and support a student, but in the end, we failed. We didn’t fail at trying or doing everything within our responsibility and power necessary to succeed. We failed in achieving the goal of helping all students be academically and behaviorally successful. We may have made the decision that another placement was more appropriate, or we eventually had to promote the student despite failing grades, but we didn’t meet our goal. We failed.

Taking it Personal

As a leader, it’s hard not to feel guilty and down about these experiences with failure. After all, when I look at social media, all I see is success stories and celebrations. But how often do schools share their failures? In what way do we discuss these situations? I am not saying we should promote these situations on our Twitter feeds, but how do we share and discuss them within our PLN’s? Or are they just ignored and hidden away, not to be discussed in public. I wonder how much we could grow by sharing and discussing our failures. After all, it is a least a small part of our reality.

Failure Can’t Stop Us!

We should never give up hope, diminish our efforts, or let this reality change what we do. We should never let our failures stop us. However, we need to admit this is part of our reality, discuss it, and use it to help us improve moving forward.

Where do you discuss your failures openly and honestly?

How can we safely share failures within education?