The other night, I watched “The Right Stuff” and the clips in the movie of the early rockets, the ones that went up and quickly came back down…or never went up at all. Those failed launches contained something so important and are what really led to those amazing astronauts heading into space. If we can teach our students that in every mistake there is something to learn, we’re only giving them one more tool for success.
While I’m not wearing my flight suit anymore (but extremely tempted to on most days) I am still thinking about Space Camp. I’m thinking about the way problems are solved. I’m thinking about the way my students are presented information. I am thinking about how sometimes we limit our students thinking with our own good intentions. We have to be careful to say far less of “Do this…” and say more of “Why do you think that happened?” Students need to see themselves as engineers of their own learning in everything we undertake.
When I see my learners again in the fall, they will each have an “Engineer’s Log” and I will try to step back even more and let them solve the problems. I can be a far better teacher if I am facilitating their learning from the sidelines. Watching, listening, questioning, and knowing when to give just the right amount of guidance. How often are kids allowed to really solve problems? There is so much pressure in the world to keep moving, keep going, get the standards, take the test. But, in reality, as with the earliest rockets that launched, there are failures. There are times when you step back and learn amazing lessons. Those astronauts eventually made it to the moon… but they didn’t get there on the very first rocket launch. We can all learn something from that.
