Failing to Teach Failure

Here’s an interesting article on the power of failure from the Lifehack.org website: I Won Science Fair with a Failed Project: The Skill of Presenting Failures. I’ve tried to teach my students to let go of their fear of failure, but it’s hard to combat the steady message of ACHIEVE! that they get from our culture.  Here are a couple of books to use in the classroom to drive the point home:

• Great Failures of the Extremely Successful – Chapters on Erin Brockovich, Tony Curtis, Al Franken and Michael Medved, among others.
• The Road to Success is Paved with Failure: How Hundreds of Famous People Triumphed over Inauspicious Beginnings, Crushing Rejection, Humiliating Defeats, and Other Speed Bumps Along Life’s Highway – short, quick stories that could easily be read each day at the beginning or end of class