Couple of rambling thoughts I've had bouncing around in my head as I introduced a new batch of students to the IGSBEP (design process... see last post) and had parents in for a back to school night:
Failing to succeed, OR- Failing, TO succeed. There is a billboard here in town that has random quotes on it. One of the more recent ones was "The road to success is paved with failures" or something along those lines. Seems like students get conditioned to doing things one way, and if it doesn't work out just the way it's supposed to they get frustrated and give up. I know I was that way in school, particularly when it came to math. If I did it the way I was shown and it didn't work- so what. Move on to the next problem and hope the teacher explains it again tomorrow! I hope in my classes to get the kids to be able to realize that there is more than one way to skin a cat (wow, both my cats just got up and left the room...). The way I show them how to do something is the way that works for me, but it might not necessarily be the way that works the best for them.
The most important part of that lesson- and this took me a long time to figure out- is that you WILL fail. You'll get a wrong answer, things won't come out quite the way you had planned. And thats okay! Adapt, be flexible, try it again from a different angle. Thomas Edison came up with something like 3,000 different ways to (re)invent the light bulb- I think only two of them worked well enough for him to use them. I don't know that I'm that patient. No, I *know* I'm not that patient.
Anyways, enough random thoughts. So many things going on right now. I feel a mass-unloading of projects / junk in the near future. On the other hand, I have been managing to get a lot done. Even managed to fire up the TIG welder and get a little practice in on aluminum. Still have a long ways to go.
Had a nice faculty meeting, in which I stayed awake, paid very close attention, and came up with the nifty sketch too! It was pretty interesting, we got to have a short little lesson taught to us in Romanian to give us an idea of what ELL students go through. Kind of an eye opener. Also got a few items checked off on Dan's chariot, more coming on that in a few days.
