The Great Failure

“Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to build an obstacle course and have each hero complete the course. You must not be detected by the evil owl eyes and you must complete the mission on time.” - Carmen SanOshkosh

This week, Spark Studio heroes received this top secret mission and experienced the journey of failure. Day 1, after receiving their mission, learners jumped with bursts of excitement and began their journey. They made quite a few errors as they grabbed more than 3 items from the Library Vault (setting off silent alarms) and they failed to agree and demo their courses. At the end of the mission, vault items were not returned and heroes failed to return to circle on time. Mission failure. 

Day 2, learners listened a bit closer to the mission instructions and although they beat the clock and returned materials to the vault everyone didn’t complete the obstacle course and all teams weren’t on the same page. Again, failure, but this time improvement! 

Failure is a beautiful thing. Along with many great life-long learners we have a motto at Acton “fail hard, fail often, and fail cheaply!” While discussing failure with learners and the process they experienced they truly said it best. “Failing is awesome because it helps us learn what to do different.” This reflection warmed the hearts of the Guides but most of all set off a new mindset for learners. Our greatest failure teaches us what to do differently and gives us the opportunity to learn. Another learner announced in true Acton spirit, “We can do it, we can rise!”