Have Your Students Conduct a Failure Audit

Wisdom Comes From Evaluated Experience

Author

Stephen Carter
January 13, 2025

I’m going to come out with it right out of the gate: Schools Need to Emphasize Progress Over Perfection.

It’s unfortunate, but most of our traditional assessments in schools are essentially lag measures - they are ways of testing, after the fact, whether or not learning has happened. And because it is after the fact, many of these assessments translate to pass or fail.

This leads to an understanding that the ultimate goal in the classroom is perfecting the process that is being tested in the assessment, which leads to an unhealthy emphasis on perfection. I’ve written at length before about how perfectionism is where learning goes to die–perfectionism and the growth mindset simply cannot work together.

The goal of learning is not perfection but progress. Consider the Japanese term “kaizen” with its emphasis on “continuous improvement.” This is the essence of a growth mindset–believing that one can improve in any area with time, dedication, and effort. If we want our students to truly adopt a growth mindset, then we must remove the stigma that comes with “failure.”

One key way to do this in real-time is to have your students conduct a “failure audit.”

When doing a failure audit, I always start with a personal story of failure (usually involving my “failed” experiences during 7th and 8th-grade dances–stories that you’ll have to buy me dinner to hear in person). I use that personal story to illustrate how learning from failure can be powerful and influential toward future success.

Then I have the students conduct a personal reflection of their own, honing in on four key aspects of the “failure”: 1) What happened? 2) Why did it happen? 3) What did you learn? 4) What will you do differently next time?

Once they have reflected on this (remember that wisdom does not come from experience but rather from evaluated experience), they need to interview two people and audit a failure from each of them. Imagine the benefit when we not only learn from our own failures but from the failures of others!

Finally, they look for patterns and insights before applying these lessons to their lives.

Conducting a failure audit is one way to begin the process of reversing the negative stigma we inadvertently (though sometimes intentionally) place on failure. For more ideas on how to redefine failure in your schools, reach out to connect (and be sure to ask me about “failure games”)!

Want to hear more? I dive deeper into the role of redefining failure in my podcast for schools, “Entrepreneurial Mindset Podcast for Transformative Education.” Listen on any podcast platform and share this link with your fellow educators.

Let’s go!

Standing out as a Christian school while staying true to your values is more challenging than ever. At Seed Tree Group, we help schools implement a proven entrepreneurship program that empowers students to take ownership of their education, equipping them with life-ready skills and creating a distinguished school with engaged students, inspired parents, and energized donors.

❝

Imagine your culture infused with growth mindset, grit, redefining failure, and opportunity seeking. Imagine your team acting and thinking like entrepreneurs.

Stephen Carter