Flint Lake Elementary School, Growing the Whole Child

Flint-LakeAt Flint Lake Elementary School, we've been talking.

We’ve been talking about the ideal that we are responsible for the whole child. We’ve been talking about the fact that school is not only a place where knowledge is imparted, but it is a place where children are nurtured to grow in every way -- socially, emotionally, physically and academically. We’ve been talking about ways to develop that social and emotional part of our children. So, we’ve been talking about the gift of failure.

By failure, we mean the opportunity to “mess up” – on an assignment, in the classroom, or on the playground. An experience of failure can have a lasting impact that is, at times, more powerful than a success. When we fail at something, we learn that failure happens to everyone, and we are not alone. We learn to problem solve in order to avoid failure in the future. We experience the feeling that comes with being forgiven, and we learn how to treat others when they’ve made a mistake. We develop a growth mindset that we can change and that failure does not define a person. We come to the understanding that failure explains a result and provides an opportunity to better that result next time. But perhaps most importantly, by experiencing failure, we learn that we can survive pitfalls, overcome them, and rise to the next occasion. We develop the courage necessary to try something hard and perhaps fail again.

At Flint Lake, we understand the importance of being responsible and reliable individuals, and we work to achieve that goal for ourselves and our students every day. We set high standards for our students, because we want each of them to reach his or her greatest level of success. We know with full confidence that they will. But we also know the importance of sometimes forgetting one’s homework, losing at a game, failing an assignment, misspeaking to a peer, or making an error on the playing field.

So when we see this happen for our students, we’ll stand back and allow for independence. We’ll maintain students’ dignity. We’ll provide appropriate consequences. Then we’ll help them up, trust them to return to a leadership role, and guide them purposefully toward another try. We will give them the gift of failure.