Week+5+Discussion+5363

The portion of Randy Nelson's speech about hiring astronauts who had shown how to deal with failure reminded me of a quote I have posted in my classroom by Theodore Roosevelt: "The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything." Failure and making mistakes is a part of success. Everyone who has had some sort of meaningful success in their lives has failed somewhere along the way. People often overlook the "goodness" of failure and the success that is ultimately achieved by it. Several years ago, I was at a friends house and met a couple whose daughter had tried to pass the math TAKS test 5 times. Being a math teacher, I started to spout off about how I could "get her to pass it". I gave them my number and a couple of weeks later, I received a call from their daughter for tutoring. I was thinking...."What have I gotten myself into".... It was the beginning of the summer and I was just starting to enjoy my time off, you know. She had already finished high school, but still didn't have her diploma because she couldn't pass the math TAKS. Anyway, after working with her for a few weeks and teaching her not just the material she was struggling with, but how to take a 60 question multiple choice test, the day finally came for her to take the TAKS. Guess what---SHE PASSED!! Her mom called me the day the scores came in and was ecstatic about the fact the her daughter passed (so was the girl!) A few weeks later I received a letter in the mail from the girl's father with a $100 "bonus check". The extra money was nice, but that's not what I remembered. In the letter, he mentioned that he had talked with his daughter about the feeling she had when she found out she had passed and to never forget it. That having failed over and over but still persisting and finally succeeding is truly what makes us remember and value life's victories. Now, the money is gone...but I still have the letter....

Source: Nelson, R. (2008). Learning and working in the collaborative age: A new model for the workplace. //Edutopia//. Retrieved July 3, 2009, from http://www.edutopia.org/randy-nelson-school-to-career-video. 