Looking at Failure Through a Different Lens

“Failure is scary! Not because it needs to be, but because of the meaning we ascribe to it.”

26 teachers from 5 schools participated in the Afternoons with TTF, held on 16 August 2010, at AV Education Society, Bangalore. Ms. Maullika Sharma, Counsellor and Consultant led the session. Ms. Maullika Sharma is a trained counsellor with specialization in child and adolescent counselling. She helps people to challenge and possibly change their own beliefs and perceptions to free themselves of past bondages and enable them to excel.

The session was an reflective and interactive one. It gave teachers an opportunity to gain a new understanding about themselves and their past failures and therefore help their students interpret failure differently. This could help them to move towards an orbit of understanding and be more emotionally aware for themselves and their students.

One of the highlights of the session was the fact that the teachers had been helped to challenge their own beliefs about failure. This worked like regression therapy, as it brought forth unexpressed fears,apprehensions and past experiences that teachers could voice out - personal as well as professional experiences.
And this is a step in the right direction! The interactions between the teachers,and the sharing that happened thereafter, will change their own perceptions and help them to excel in the classroom.

Some of the key points which came across during the session were:

• Learning Goals inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviour than Performance Goals
• The belief that you can't improve student's achievements.
• Praising children for their efforts than intelligence, is a great motivational factor.
• Study skills and learning skills are inert until they are powered by an active ingredient – the belief that their efforts are not futile
• “Success and Failure by themselves have no effect of a child's motivation to learn.
• It is the reaction of parents, teachers and other adults, to that success and failure, that can have a devastating effect”.

The session ended with the film clip of Famous Failures.



Posted by Firoza Maneksha-Sinha, Sr. Centre Coordinator, TTF Bangalore