We're Always Failing Forward

First, a confession.  In high school, I never felt like the most talented or gifted student in the art studio.  

I was the kind of student who spent a lot of time comparing himself negatively to his peers, I was the kind of student who had to do things several times in order to really learn them.   I spent a lot of time wondering if I just learned more slowly than those around me, and those feelings of unworthiness came to a head during my sophomore year.  My favorite art teacher – Mrs. Sabol – announced that she would be leaving at the end of the school year, and the news terrified me.  I felt as though she knew me best, it was in her studio that I felt some modicum of “success”, it was in her studio where I felt as though I had something meaningful to offer.  Before she left, I worked up the courage to ask her if she thought I had “what it takes” to have some sort of career in the visual arts: without her immediate encouragement, I honestly don’t know what path I might have ended up following.    

Thinking back on this, it strikes me just how much power I awarded this teacher.

And, of course, looking back on it reminds me just how important the interactions I have with my students – our influence can be massive.

It is for these reasons that I believe positive reinforcement and encouragement goes a long way toward empowering and inspiring learners, so too do I believe that understanding and working with all kinds of “failure” does the same.  What I now know is that the lens through which I viewed myself simply wasn’t accurate – I was the kind of student who needed to get my hands on the learning, who need to explore and embrace it, who needed to “play” in order to feel comfortable, in order to be creative and expansive.  What I know now is that I was neither slower nor faster than anyone else –  I was curious, and experiential, and kinesthetic.  I wanted to understand everything in a deep and tactile way.  

Put another way: someone telling me that something worked a certain way was not an end, but a beginning.  I needed proof.  I needed to explore.

Embracing a mistake or an undesired outcome as a springboard for informed forward momentum is where failure finds its power – cultivating this as exploration and experimentation is where creativity finds its soul.  

Since creativity is a mindset that cannot easily be transferred through top-down instruction, students need to develop and practice regular skills which allow them to explore, with the understanding that there rarely is one “correct answer”, but instead a myriad of potential outcomes which each allow them to develop voice and agencyAnd all that is required to begin the process is curiosity.  

As an art educator at Stone Independent School, I believe we can help all students use artistic thinking to embrace good failure and thereby get comfortable with their own mark-making and self expression.  With a basic lexicon and fundamental artistic practice early in the studio learning experiences, students can more comfortably dive into the power of personal mark-making, using subjects, tools and materials of their choice.  There is no expiration date to the many benefits that these learning experiences can have to empower learning in any subject or potential career path.  There is no end to the learning.  

Every day, I explore and expand my understanding of the creative practice.  Allowing students to see my own struggles – my unfinished images and sketches and “failures” – gives them a front row seat to my personal learning process in action.  The number of ways students can put these understandings into practice is never-ending and reaches into all their future career pathways and opportunities.  As an art educator, I continue to push my students and myself to explore the endless potential and endless applications of the creative process – within the visual arts and within the work they do everywhere they go.  

If you visit Stone, you’ll see a sign hanging over the studio which reads, “Fail forward”.  I feel so fortunate to be an art educator and to teach the benefit of creating thinking, risk-taking, and “good failure”, and I feel so fortunate to do that work at a school like Stone!

See Also: How We Teach at Stone; The School That Changed My Life; What Erica Bartos Can’t Work Without;

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