Failure as a Teaching Tool
Albert Einstein. JK Rowling. Michael Jordan. These are not exactly names that make you think of failure. Yet, each of them faced challenges, stumbling blocks even outright failures across their lives.
Help tweens explore failure to bring alive the values of resilience, perseverance, and grit as they learn about these accomplished people in the just-released The Failure Book: How 22 Extraordinary People Persisted to Beat the Odds and How You Can Too.
From these inspirational profiles, discover how failure can actually serve as a tool that helps foster the growth that can ultimately lead to success. Drawing prompts, thought questions, and other engagement activities after each profile encourage children to apply the lessons of extraordinary people to their own challenges and everyday experiences.
Here are some ideas for using The Failure Book with students:
- Connect the idea of growing from mistakes with t'shuvah, the Jewish process of getting ourselves back on track and committing to making better choices.
- Use the short biographies as discussion starters about resilience, then brainstorm problem solving ideas for a current challenge they are facing themselves
- Discuss how successful people choose to focus their energy on things within their control and focus on the present and future instead of looking back. Jewish prayer is like that too - focused on ways to move forward.
- Create fun Kahoot quizzes using the information about famous people.
Download the Failure Book free teaching guide with more ideas and tips for use in remote settings.
Download a sample activity page.
Contact us about a 30% discount for classroom use or review.
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