You must be willing to participate and be vulnerable. It has been suggested from our partnering sites that you as a facilitator start this process with a video clip of yourself engaging with youth in a STEAM-focused making activity.
How will you introduce norms? How will you incorporate educator and/or team goals? How will educators introduce their video clip (e.g. provide context or other background)?
From our experience, educators tend to focus on positive aspects of how their colleagues respond to youth’s moments of failure. How might you support educators in providing constructive and not evaluative feedback to one another?
Keep in mind (a) the “fear” and focus that many will have on their own practices and (b) tensions between ideal learning experiences and pragmatic realities. Acknowledge but try to reframe to focus on learners.
How would you redirect a conversation focused on student misbehavior? How would you navigate a conversation that positions the educator as a “failure”? How would you build upon a conversation that is focused on how the educator’s response to the child’s failure shaped the child’s project? What might you do if a video shared is void of youth’s failure moments?
Will you gather student data within your STEAM-making activities and utilize them in these reflection sessions? How might you introduce student data as a form of feedback? What questions might you ask to support educator’s reflection on their pedagogical practices through student data?
How will you end your reflection sessions? We suggest providing time to reflect on the session (e.g., feedback given and received) and individual and/or team pedagogical practices around youth’s experiences with failure. This could be quiet time and/or a discussion.