Laura McBain [00:00:00]:
Learning is an evocative experience. There is no if you’re not learning. If you’re not feeling something, you’re probably not learning a whole lot.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:07]:
Hello everyone. My name is Doctor Cindy Burnett.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:10]:
And my name is Doctor Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:12]:
This is the fueling Creativity in Education podcast.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:16]:
On this show we’ll be talking about creativity topics and how they apply to the field of education.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:21]:
We’ll be speaking with scholars, educators, and resident experts about their work, challenges they face, and digging deeper into new and varying perspectives of creativity, all with the.

Matthew Worwood [00:00:32]:
Goal to help fuel a more rich and informed discussion that provides teachers and parents with knowledge they can use at home or in the classroom.

Cyndi Burnett [00:00:40]:
So let’s begin. We are very excited to share with you that we have two special guests on the show today. Our first guest is also our first returning guest of the feeling creativity in education podcast, Doctor Ron Begetto. Ron is an internationally recognized expert on creative thought and action in educational settings. He holds the Pinnacle West Presidential chair and serves as a professor in the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Ron is the editor for the Journal of Creative Behavior and for review of Research in Education, as well as the series editor for the Creative Theory and Action in education book. So welcome back Ron.

Ron Beghetto [00:01:23]:
Thank you. It’s great to be back.

Matthew Worwood [00:01:25]:
Our second guest is Laura McBrain. Laura is a designer educator and the co director of the K Twelve Lab at the Stanford D School. As a human centered designer, her work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities to advance racial and social justice. Laura worked for 15 years at high Tech High, serving as the director of external relations, principal of two school sites, and founding teacher. Laura, it’s also a pleasure to have you on the show and for the.

Laura McBain [00:01:56]:
First time, thank you for allowing me to come. Excited to be here.

Cyndi Burnett [00:02:00]:
So Ron and Laura have recently published a new book called my favorite how setbacks can lead to learning and growth. So the first thing we’d like to do is say congratulations because we know how much work a book is and welcome you to the show. And we’d like to start with you as individuals because you refer to something as beautiful risk taking. Can you each share with us your favorite failure that you’ve had?

Laura McBain [00:02:28]:
Ron and I will always point to each other and then we start riffing. We’ll see where it goes. You know, I feel like I’ve had a number of failures in my life. As someone who takes on a lot of challenges personally and professionally, failure is part of it. One of my very first days of teaching, my first day of teaching was, I would say, an epic failure. I took a lot of risks that day, but I was. I started teaching in San Diego, California, at a comprehensive school about 10, 15, 20 minutes from the border of San Diego and Mexico. So it was a big, comprehensive high school, about 3600 students.

Laura McBain [00:03:05]:
I was the fourth teacher my students had that year, so they had multiple substitutes. I came in mid year, so it was like January something. And I remember teaching that very first day, and it was not so great. Not only did the students not want me there because they’re like, here’s another substitute. They’re going to be out in a month. So they were just not happy to have me at all. So the energy was pretty off. And one of the moments that I had been teaching is throughout the morning I’ve been trying to do things and nothing was really going well.

Laura McBain [00:03:41]:
The students were mad. I really didn’t know what I was doing. I was feeling overwhelmed throughout the experience. And I just felt like. I really felt like there was a moment around lunchtime where I sat down at the desk and put my head down on my desk and started to cry. I’m like, why did I sign up for this? Like, what was I thinking? I felt like I made the worst choice. I had just spent, you know, $15,000 on a credential. I show up with my first classroom and I have all these, like, aspirations, and I felt this really, really is not a good idea.

Laura McBain [00:04:17]:
I felt like I made a really bad decision. And I was like, I am not ready for this. Part of the failure was like, the students didn’t like me. There was a lot of discipline issues. I didn’t quite know what I was doing. And I remember in that same moment as I was literally crying at my desk, I heard a knock on my door from this student who I had seen earlier that day, who came in and asked me if she could have lunch with me, and she sat down with me. And while, you know, there were a lot of moments where I felt like I was underprepared, making a lot of mistakes. I didn’t actually value the students.

Laura McBain [00:04:49]:
I wasn’t trying to do the right thing. I remember that at the end of that first day, I remember feeling like a complete and utter failure. And yet even in that one day, I did have this one student come in and sit with me, and I was like, okay, I’ll come back tomorrow. And so that was like my first day of teaching, which was really an utter failure. And there was a little glimmer of a bright spot at the end of the day, halfway through the day that I was like, okay, I’m going to put this together. But I think that was actually, you know, one of my favorite failures was because it reminded me, her coming in reminded me about what my role was, which was ultimately really just to connect with young people and be there for them. And I’ve been doing everything to do the opposite of that. And having her come in just reminded me that, like, okay, this is actually who I’m supposed to be, and this is what I need to do.

Matthew Worwood [00:05:40]:
Laura, before we go to hear about Ron’s failure, there was one of the things that stuck out on me. And in the book, you talk a little bit about expectations, and we talk a lot about expectations. There’s a chapter about our own expectations and then the expectations of others. And it strikes me that actually that was a new environment, a new experience that you’re going in. And I just wonder if, are we more willing to take risks, for example, when we actually don’t know the potential consequences. Right. Of. Of messing up? And are we also more likely to experience epic failures, right.

Matthew Worwood [00:06:14]:
When we know nothing about the environment?

Laura McBain [00:06:16]:
Well, and I think that was a new environment, and yet I’ve been there before. I’ve been in classrooms before. I think part of the expectations is the kind of we hold these, like, I had this expectation. I remember teaching that I was going to walk in, the students are going to love me. I had these, like, really fun activities, and they’re just like, whatever. Who are you? I have these expectations that they were going to, we’re going to, like, bond, and I’m going to have this great day, and here I am, this great young teacher, and they’re going to love me. Like, I had these ideas about that, you know? And so that was my expectation. You know, I had this concept that, like, who I was and the activities I designed would be enough.

Laura McBain [00:06:54]:
I thought that’s what it was about. And so that was my expectation is I would come in, I would hold authority, I would. They would respect me because I’m the teacher. All those things that I thought were true, the expectations I had about what it meant to be a teacher were pretty much blown out of the water in the first, like, 2 hours because they were, those weren’t the expectations that they had. Their expectations were quite different. You know, their expectations were, she doesn’t like me. I don’t like, she’s going to leave, actually was their expectation. They expected me to leave within a couple weeks.

Laura McBain [00:07:27]:
And so I think part of, like, I think the failure expectation, I think, ron, you and I can probably talk a lot about this, is like, what is the mutuality between expectations, between my expectations versus the people that I’m working with are serving? And oftentimes the expectations are not the same. And that’s where the failure and mistakes come in, is because we have these perceived expectations about how something is going to go or how it’s going to be received. And actually there’s massive void there. And so part of I think you’re getting at, which is like, not only how do we actually look at those expectations who are actually holding them so that we can actually kind of disentangle where the failure is coming through.

Cyndi Burnett [00:08:08]:
So I also wonder, given that we will probably be publishing this right before school starts for all of those new teachers out there listening, saying, I’m about to walk into my first classroom, how could they establish realistic expectations? What advice would you give to them so that when they walk in, they are successful or they don’t feel like they are a total failure?

Laura McBain [00:08:31]:
I mean, one thing that I think is really, really powerful is letters to my teacher. Things, you know that you don’t ask me that you should know about, like letters to teachers. We often do that in the very first week, and I’ve done that is asking young people to write a letter to their teacher that says, what are your expectations of me? And I will say, this is not public, this is individual. And letting the student say, these are things you should know about me that I may or may not be willing to tell you, or this is what might feel comfortable. That’s actually a very step forward, man. They’re quite revealing because it allows young people and any, at any age level to actually share. This is my expectations of you based on my past experience. And here’s what I need from you in order to thrive.

Laura McBain [00:09:10]:
A letter to the teacher individual is actually a really nice way to actually level set some of those expectations.

Cyndi Burnett [00:09:16]:
Thank you. So, Ron, are you ready to share yours?

Ron Beghetto [00:09:20]:
Yeah, I just want to comment on a couple things that Laura brought up. I love her favorite failure story and the setting expectations. The letter. The letter can also be a drawing. You know, if kids aren’t comfortable writing, for example, they could draw a picture about themselves. This is what you need to know about me and so on. The other thing that we encourage teachers to do, instead of, you know, playing these cheesy people bingo icebreaker games or something, start with a favorite failure. Start by sharing your own favorite failure.

Ron Beghetto [00:09:47]:
Think how powerful it would be for example, math, which a lot of kids don’t like or have had bad experiences with. What if their math teachers start the first day and say, I’m going to share my favorite failure in math with you all, and I’m going to invite you to share those with each other, and if you feel comfortable, share them with us. If you do that on the first day, that’s a beautiful risk. And why it’s a beautiful risk is because it establishes a trusted environment. So we talk about that a lot, and it’s interesting. It seems the research on establishing trusting environments suggests that the way to do that is to take risks together. But a lot of people, including us as educators, think, well, we need to build a trusty environment before we can take risks. So we never do.

Ron Beghetto [00:10:28]:
Right? So it’s about taking risks together first. And beautiful risks are risks that can make a positive difference to others. And favorite failures is risky because you’re showing your humanity and vulnerability, but they don’t have to be, you don’t have to share some deep trauma or something like that. It can be, you know, a little kind of setback that you’ve had and explaining why it’s your favorite and what you kind of experienced during that failure. So we encourage people to start that out and we appreciate you putting us on the spot, you know, making us do that ourselves. So hopefully we’re building a little trusting environment amongst the four of us and maybe your listeners. So I’ll share one of my, I have so many failures. Some are favorites and some aren’t.

Ron Beghetto [00:11:08]:
But along education lines, this is one of my favorites, just because what I learned about myself in this situation and our framework is very simple for this, you share what happened and importantly, what you felt and what you learned about yourself, what you learned about the situation and why it’s your favorite. And the thing I just, before I share mine again, I’m not just putting this off indefinitely. Here is the thing I really loved that I thought was beautiful about Laura’s story. And we can maybe talk about later because it illustrated a lot of things in the book. One is that this, the most beautiful moment in her story is when that little kid comes up to her and engages with her and we talk about how failure is a social and shared experience and responsibility and who’s going to have the courage to kind of go in and try to fix that, right? To kind of go in and disrupt that and say it’s okay, right? So there’s stories about that in the book, but I love that in that story. That the kid, you know, reaches out to Laura. And that was the connecting point that said, hey, I’m here for you. I want you to be here.

Ron Beghetto [00:12:12]:
And so that was enough for Laura to feel like, yeah, and I’m coming back for sure. So those are those beautiful moments that sometimes we miss because we think about failure as this kind of individual experience, when really it is a shared experience. So onto my story. Okay, so this was after I had already been a classroom teacher and I was working in teacher education, and I was supervising student teachers. This was early in my career as an assistant professor, and I had a student who was student teaching. And so I was going into observe. That’s just part of the process. And so.

Ron Beghetto [00:12:44]:
But I didn’t want to just, you know, be an observer. So I was, you know, wandering around the room, engaging the students. These were little primary elementary students, and a little kid had drawn a picture, and I wanted to give the kid feedback. I’m like, oh, that’s such a nice little rocket ship you’ve drawn there. And the kids are like, that’s a picture of my mom. And in that moment, I was like, oh, I felt really embarrassed. I felt I didn’t know if I hurt that kid’s feelings. I’m like, I cannot believe I did that.

Ron Beghetto [00:13:12]:
And the thing that, why it’s one of my favorites is the thing I learned about that kind of situation is if I would have just asked, what have you drawn here? Right? Instead of just imposing my evaluation, assuming that I knew what was going on there, that would have changed everything. And so it’s one of my favorites because it was this kind of instantaneous little moment that reminds me that as educators, we should really ask students to explain what they’re doing rather than just kind of evaluate it and interpret ourselves and impose that on them. And I also learned that about myself, that that’s what I tended to do, that I went in there, I was very confident in my own teaching or whatever, and here I made this kind of really rookie mistake by just telling a kid what they’ve drawn rather than asking the kid what they’ve drawn. So it’s something that I carry with me, and it’s just one of those moments. So it can be that simple. So it’s, you know, whatever your comfort level is in sharing these stories out, we really do encourage all educators and adults working with young people to share those out. And I think it really does establish a trusting environment. It really does set the tone for the school year or the coaching or whatever you’re doing working with other people that, look, we’re going to anticipate setbacks because we’re learning here and we’re going to be trying out different things.

Ron Beghetto [00:14:27]:
We’re going to be creative, and there’s inevitably going to be some setbacks and failures along the way, but we can learn from them together.

Cyndi Burnett [00:14:34]:
When I was going through the book and I was thinking about failure, I was also thinking about mistakes, because mistakes feel small and failure seems sort of big and epic. So it’s like, I think about a failure and it’s, like, huge. And then you think about a mistake, and it’s like you answered a question incorrectly. So what would you consider the difference between a mistake and a failure? And do you frame that for students and teachers?

Laura McBain [00:14:59]:
That’s a great question. Thanks, Cindy. And I think one of the things that I think is really interesting is, I think, I mean, even the one that you mentioned actually is like, I think it depends on the user. But also, I mean, you described answering a question incorrectly, actually could feel like a failure. You know, it may be a mistake, but I think one of the pieces that we’ve distinguished on this is that mistake is actually something that’s felt really individually, that’s actually done in, like, if I make my chicken for dinner, right, and I’m cooking something and it doesn’t burn the level of expectation, reality is that’s a mistake. You know, it’s not a big deal. I’m going to be able to go with it. A failure is actually done in community, where you actually had a responsibility to someone else that was in community.

Laura McBain [00:15:39]:
And we all make mistakes individually. Like, you know, this morning I was cooking my spinach and I overcooked it. That’s a mistake. No big deal, no consequences, right. From that. But a failure is actually often something that has a connection to others, that there’s another. There’s a community experience. Because I think one of the things that Ron was getting at is that, like, while failures might be felt individually, like I failed, like I did something, but there is a connection that is in community.

Laura McBain [00:16:08]:
It’s a reaction or relationship with others in a community. That’s where I think failure really does come into play. Is that difference between I failed, what actually means? There’s something about this failure that actually interacts with how I view myself, view the world, view my community. A mistake, right. Different levels of consequences. But a mistake is often something that’s lacking in emotion. That’s very clear. And then also something that actually is, have very little consequence, that actually allows you to feel without any pressure, expectation.

Laura McBain [00:16:40]:
And so I think that’s one of the things that we’re noticing a lot within the stories is that, like, there’s a lot of moments in schools that we perceive as mistakes, that a young person might perceive as a mistake, or a teacher might perceive a mistake. Excuse me, but a young person might perceive that as a failure. Case in point, you think about you, even your example, as someone who had an auditory processing disorder, where I’d be waiting and giving the wrong answer. That would have felt like an epic failure for me as an elementary student, where I’m waiting, trying to give an answer, and then I get it wrong. That actually is not a mistake for me. That’s a failure, because I had a lot of stigma around that, so my emotion were heightened around what I needed to do to do right. And so I think part of what we’re trying to get at between mistake and failure is really unearthing. How do these moments feel? What’s the bandwidth that people are kind of experiencing them with so that we can actually unpack how they shape us and how they change us?

Matthew Worwood [00:17:36]:
And I think, building on this idea of how they shape us, Ron, you had referenced kind of like a moment of reflection, being able to catch it, get curious about what does that say about us as individuals? And I think back, I mean, you’re right, the magnitude of the failure, how many people are impacted are probably the ones that maybe we feel a little bit more ashamed about. We’re frustrated, we’re disappointed. I mean, I think about all of these different feelings that come to mind when I look back at a mistake that I made. And you’ve got these really horrible feelings, these intense feelings at the beginning. Sometimes it’s even anger. And at times, I found myself almost wanting to blame others. Right. But I had to really work hard to bring it back onto me.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:18]:
And really all it came down to is I was maxed out. You know, I just taken on too much. And even though I saw the issues coming, I was too burnt out to do anything about them. But in reflection, I probably should have noticed that was burning out and addressed it earlier. But the big takeaway was for me to kind of unpack it and learn from it. I had to kind of push through all of these incredibly negative emotions. And only when I pushed through those negative motions was I in a position to then reflect and say, right, what could you have done better? Let’s unpack this. Let’s become, you know, let’s grow yourself wrong.

Ron Beghetto [00:18:53]:
Like.

Matthew Worwood [00:18:53]:
Like, as you said, like, how do I improve as a person from this experience? And so I think, from my perspective, how do you get students to push through those really difficult feelings? And two, it’s quite hard to actually be upfront and honest about the contributions that you made. It’s a lot easier to put them on other people.

Ron Beghetto [00:19:14]:
Definitely. It’s emotionally laden and it’s a kind of emotion. And we learned this in the book. We didn’t go in having this kind of category. Like, what’s the difference between mistaken failures through working through these narratives that we kind of came to these realizations. But there has been research done by psychologists that differentiate between different kinds of emotions. And so there is this kind of type of emotion called self conscious emotions. And those are the emotions that really are sticky, like shame.

Ron Beghetto [00:19:42]:
I mean, shame is probably one of the most debilitating ones, right? Because it really does. It’s an indictment of the self. It’s really about your identity. And guilt is another one of those, but so is pride. They’re not all negative, but negative. Self conscious emotions are. Are really sticky and difficult, and those come with failure, right. Because there is a social component to those.

Ron Beghetto [00:20:04]:
It really is about your identity, but also your identity as you probably perceive it to be viewed by others, right? So a mistake, you know, can be painful, it can be frustrating, but, you know, you can erase it and rewrite it, or you can just throw that thing out that you burned that you were making and start over. It could be, you know, you’re not necessarily happy about that, but it’s not going to necessarily stay with you. Unless, of course, it does. I think that’s the other thing that Laura recognizes. So even if you’re making something for your family, maybe then you become. You carry that with you for the rest of your life. Like, you can’t cook, right? And it becomes an embarrassment if that’s important in your kind of family dynamic. So I think those are important things to remember, not assume that it’s just a mistake.

Ron Beghetto [00:20:48]:
And so this gets to your point, which is, how do we do this in school? First of all, we need to allow negative emotions in school. It’s absolutely ludicrous if school is a real experience, which it is, some people feel like it has a lot of artificial trappings, but in fact, there are real people doing real things there. Then how come people can’t get upset? Why is it not okay for a little kid to be frustrated, to be angry, to feel embarrassed? Why do we immediately rush and say, oh, you know, you don’t have to be upset about this. We know from our own personal relationships that that doesn’t ever help. When you’re really upset and somebody says, oh, come on, you don’t have to be upset. That’s patronizing at best. And infuriating, more likely. Right? So why do we do that to little kids all the time? Like, you can’t have a negative emotion.

Ron Beghetto [00:21:37]:
If you’re really learning and trying and struggling and creating and taking risks, you’re going to have some negative emotions. Now, how you exercise those, you know, you can’t, you know, smash a chair against the wall or something, but you can feel angry for sure. And I think part of it is we have to recognize that kids are going to have run the full gamut of emotions. So that’s the first step. And then we can talk about that as a class and just say, look, you might get really frustrated. Let’s talk about what we’re going to do with that emotion. And it’s okay if you feel that way, but we’re here for you, right? We’re going to. You can ask for help.

Ron Beghetto [00:22:11]:
Those are different things that we can do to help prevent that. And it kind of gets into this idea of disrupting those moments so they don’t become this shame moment that kids carry with them forever. Can we build these kind of agreements in that if you are up on the chalkboard or whiteboard or wherever you are, you know, in the room doing something and you get stuck, can you kind of tap in somebody else? Right. Who’s going to step up in those moments? Right. Can we trust each other to just step in and share that moment so it doesn’t have to turn into kind of a lingering embarrassment or deep shame or something like that? That I think happens a lot in schools, and teachers may not necessarily recognize it, but the kid does. And then you stop seeing that kid participate. You start seeing all those things happen. So I think it’s really important just to underscore what Laura said.

Ron Beghetto [00:23:04]:
We sometimes, as adults, see something from our vantage point as, oh, that’s just a simple little mistake or setback, when really, for some kids, it could be a pretty deep and profound failure.

Laura McBain [00:23:15]:
And that’s. I mean, I’ll tap in there, too, because, Matt, I think your question about how do we push through? I don’t think we push through. We invite in, you know, and I think that’s the difference we’re talking about is that, like, you know, one of the things I think there’s a lot of work right now in Sel, in school, social emotional learning. And I think that we have to invite all these emotions, and learning is an evocative experience. There is no, if you’re not learning, if you’re not feeling something, you’re probably not learning a whole lot, you know? And so I think what, you know, we think about starting off a school year, we often do what we call is, at the D school, we do what we call is the productive struggle graph where we have people taught, try to all the moments that they learn something, the highs and lows when they’re really learning something, into a moment they weren’t learning. And then we have them track on the same kind of graph the emotions around that. Not surprising that the moments where they felt like they were really, really learning something was actually really hard. They felt.

Laura McBain [00:24:05]:
They felt frustrated. They felt angry. And I think what Ron is suggesting we’re talking about is, like, actually should be at the forefront of a classroom and in a school and say, this year, we’re gonna have. You’re gonna get frustrated with your teammates. Like, that is a reality. And so how do we invite those emotions in where actually we can start getting better at noticing them, right. Holding space for each other and allowing failures to occur? Because when we actually do allow those moments to failure, and I will tell you from a design perspective, all those prototypes where you built this thing and it didn’t work, you’re really sad, you’re really frustrated, you’re really angry, and yet, right. Those are the most provocative moments of learning.

Laura McBain [00:24:43]:
And I think our role as educators is to anticipate those, to create spaces where those moments actually you get to happen because they are the most, I would call the most profound moments of learning.

Cyndi Burnett [00:24:54]:
One of the ideas that came out in my book, weaving creativity into every strand of your curriculum, has a bunch of ideas that teachers can implement. And I got all these ideas from educators. And one of the ideas that I love that always resonates with teachers is to have, for young children to have a challenge bear in the classroom. So get a stuffed animal and you name it in the beginning of the class, and you say, whenever you’re struggling with something, you can bring the challenge bear to your desk and keep it there with you. And he’ll be there for support. And teachers love doing that because it’s just something simple where you have that sort of, like, little security that everyone uses to get through those hard times. So just a simple way you can do it with little ones.

Ron Beghetto [00:25:34]:
Yeah, I love that. And I think you could even plus one that for older kids just having something like, you know, it could be a card, a red card that they flip over on their table and just, it’s like, you know, I’m experiencing some challenge here. I might need some space or, you know, I might need somebody to help me out without, you know, raising your hand or yelling out something. But I think, you know, it’s true. We see this in creativity studies as well, that, you know, emotion is intertwined, and we’ve done work that shows it’s dynamic, it changes. Right. And typically, before you have this kind of creative breakthrough where you do resolve the uncertainty you’re feeling, it can be extremely frustrating and demoralizing, and it impacts your confidence and all these different things. But, you know, it’s part of the process.

Ron Beghetto [00:26:17]:
And I think if we just be honest about it and transparent and say, we’re going to go through this and we can have these little, I think I like having these little markers that say it just signals to people like, I’m okay, but I need to work through this. I’m kind of frustrated right now, but it’s not about I’m working on this or I do need help. Right. Seeking help is another thing that is really important. And in school, it becomes this kind of counterintuitive thing that kids worry if they ask for help, then people are going to see them as less competent. So particularly successful students, when they hit a wall as they get older in school or go on to university or job, they’re least likely to ask for help because they feel like what’s going to be a sign that they’re no longer the best student or don’t know what to do. And so we got to kind of trouble all those things that happen in schools that I think are artifacts of schools. And one way to do this is just be open about it like you’re going to.

Ron Beghetto [00:27:11]:
It’s okay. It’s actually a good thing. If you run into a barrier, it means you’re about ready to learn, and it might not work out. So our motto at innovation house when I was at University of Connecticut was, this may not work, but we’re going to learn from it. And so that actually gave a lot of space for people to almost do anything because we just said, okay, yeah, it might not work, but let’s try it. And even if it doesn’t work, we could still talk about it what you learn. And that’s what our end of the year thing was. It was a celebration of learning.

Ron Beghetto [00:27:42]:
Some people actually had innovations and prototypes and got funding to start their own company or whatever and other things were a catastrophic disaster, but everybody got to talk about what they learned. So that that kind of leveled the playing field a little bit.

Cyndi Burnett [00:27:58]:
We’re going to wrap up this episode with three tips that you would give to educators to bring creativity into the classroom. But we would like you to be specific and focus in on beautiful risk taking and how to bring more opportunities for failure in the classroom. Laura, would you like to start us off with three?

Laura McBain [00:28:16]:
Sure. I mean, that’s right on the spot. I love it. Three tips. I love it. One is, I think we have to start talking about failure more. I mean, I think that’s the biggest tip right up, right off the bat, is like having people share, whether it’s stories from our book or your own stories, is a way we can actually get there. So having people write about their own story, what was the moment of failure for them? What did it feel like? What did they learn from it? That is actually an essential first step that anyone can do.

Laura McBain [00:28:40]:
And it actually doesn’t take a whole lot of things to do it. You just need something to write with if you want. Very analog experience that doesn’t cost any money and allows people to do that. I think so that’s one. I think the second tip is really making sure that the work that we’re designing with young people at any age level is worthy of failure that actually matters. I think one of the things that we often do is we create, and I’m speaking from my k twelve like perspective, is that we design lessons, if you will, that actually don’t have a lot of expectations around them. They’re not worthy. Like if you do a worksheet and the only audience is the teacher, and then it goes in the bin when you’re done.

Laura McBain [00:29:18]:
Right. Who cares if I fail? There’s no. There’s actually. There’s really no risk there. So the second thing I think is really, how do we design real life examples or real life experiences where students are taking on work of consequence, right. That’s actually how we get to failure, because their work really matters. And then I think the last one, you know, and Matt kind of got at it, which is how are we providing opportunities for anyone to really reflect on the moments, not just at the end of the project. Right.

Laura McBain [00:29:47]:
But throughout the projects, throughout their experiences, about where they failed on a daily moment. Like, where did that. Because the more that we get better at talking about the spectrum between mistakes and failures, the spectrum between success and failure, the more comfortable we are actually taking more risks. Right. The more comfortable we get talking about it, the more likely we’re going to be like, oh, that wasn’t so bad. Because right now, because we don’t talk about failure a lot in schools, it becomes the black box. So we don’t talk about it, and it becomes things like, don’t touch that. That’s the bad thing.

Laura McBain [00:30:20]:
Let’s not. Let’s avoid it. But I think the more that we can really, whether it’s an exit slip every day. Right. Like, what did you succeed at today? What did you fail at? Again, that’s an index card walking out the door question that we can do in classrooms that anyone can do. But again, it gets us in this process of reflecting about how we succeeded and how we failed.

Ron Beghetto [00:30:41]:
Yeah, I love those, Laura. Those are difficult to build on, but I’ll take a shot because there’s so much richness in there. And I think it’s really reflective of what we talked about in our book and what the stories reveal. But I would say something else we talk about is stay away from empty slogans and platitudes like these cat posters of hanging there, teachers saying, have grit. Or even, you know, even good concepts like, you know, growth mindset. Sometimes that doesn’t talk about the emotional pain and difficulty that somebody’s really experiencing when they are failing, even. And, you know, especially for minimizing it by saying something like that, it doesn’t really speak to that. So I think recognize that this is going to be emotionally laden and that there are going to be difficult emotions and those are okay and should be anticipated.

Ron Beghetto [00:31:34]:
And I think it’s easy just to say these slogans, you know, fail forward. Everyone makes mistakes, but to really try to understand it and hear what. What that kid is experiencing or what that team’s experiencing, and to validate that, say, yeah, I could. You know, it is. It’s expected you would be really upset and angry or frustrated or even embarrassed by what happened. So let’s. Let’s talk about what we’re gonna do next with that. Right.

Ron Beghetto [00:31:59]:
What did you learn from that? Is there something you could have done differently so you can be there with them and kind of help work through that? So I think that’s key. I think the other thing is to, you know, encourage and take beautiful risks yourself. Right. So starting with sharing your favorite failures, all those different things, inviting kids to give you different kinds of feedback. So, you know, what about an exit slip for the teacher? We always ask students, like, but how about next slip for us? Like, what did I do really well? Today, what’s something that I, because, you know what’s beautiful about that? You can think about that, too and say, you know, I thought I really did a good job explaining this instruction, but the students might see something completely different that you’re not even aware of, or maybe they do see the same thing, and that reinforces that. And then you can also ask, what’s something I could have worked on, right. I think it’s one of those things where we have to kind of respect our students enough. If we’re asking them to do something, they should be able to ask us to be able to do that as well.

Ron Beghetto [00:32:56]:
So I think that’s a beautiful risk you could take. Why don’t we try exit slips for teachers? I think that might be interesting and then just, again, be willing to step into that and just set up some ground rules. This is like the third one or just some very easy expectations. Like, okay, look, in this class, we’re going to probably all, including me as your instructor or teacher, going to have setbacks and failures, and it’s just part of the work because we’re trying new things out. So what are we going to do when that happens? How are we going to be okay doing that? You know, we’re not just going to let somebody twist in the wind over there in this kind of frozen state of shame. Who’s going to be the first person to raise their hand and say, hey, I can help out or whatever, you know? So set up some expectations that we’re here for each other and that we’re going to still go through it. And it’s not always going to be pleasant, but that gets back to Matt’s thing. That’s where you can really learn from it.

Ron Beghetto [00:33:52]:
I don’t think people learn from mistakes when they’re just being given these empty platitudes, like, oh, you don’t have to be upset or, you know, just get some more grit, you know, just get back in there and try it again. Yeah, that’s a great message, but you have to recognize that it might be difficult to do that. Right? Especially if they feel alone or just devastated by what just happened. So I think those are just a couple things that I would add to what Laura said. And it’s just, it’s been a fun process. We’ve learned a lot. We invite everyone to collect stories, share stories out, do that because we learned so much from this process. And it really was just having conversations around these stories where we had these insights.

Ron Beghetto [00:34:31]:
And so we encourage all your listeners to do the same. You know, whether it’s your own children or young people you work with or colleagues, whatever the case may be, sharing these stories out is a really powerful way to build trust and to build those kinds of relationships where you can support each other to do creative and innovative work.

Matthew Worwood [00:34:47]:
So that concludes this episode of the fueling creativity in Education podcast. Thank you to Ron and Laura for being on the show. We really appreciated having you. If there’s any questions that you have about this show, past, present, or even future, feel free to reach out to Cindy myself@questionsuelingcreativitypodcast.com. My name is Doctor Matthew Werwood.

Cyndi Burnett [00:35:09]:
And my name is Doctor Cindy Burnett. This podcast was produced by creativity and education and in partnership with dadsforcreativity.com dot. Our editor is Sina Youssef Sode.