My Favorite Failure with Dr. Ron Beghetto and Laura McBain
08/23/22 • 35 min
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome back Dr. Ron Beghetto along with Laura McBain, Co-Director of the K12 Lab at the Stanford d.school. Ron and Laura recently came out with a new book, “My Favorite Failure: How Setbacks Can Lead to Learning and Growth”. As a human-centered designer, Laura’s work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design and innovative educational experiences.
Listen in to learn about Ron and Laura’s personal favorite failures, the relationship between expectations and failure, how to start the school year off with sharing favorite failures, and the valuable difference between mistakes and failures. The duo also shares their best tips and advice for new teachers as well as how to get students to push through feelings of failure so that they can learn and grow from it.
Questions Answered:
Why is it important to acknowledge and talk about emotions in school?
Are we more willing to take risks when we don’t know the potential consequences?
Are we more likely to experience failure when we do not know anything about the environment?
What types of failure are the most impactful for students? (ie. F letter grades, public failure)
...and more!
Laura’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
- Start talking about failure more.
- Make sure the work you’re designing for young people are worth the failure. How do you design real life examples where students are taking on work of consequence?
- Provide multiple opportunities for students to reflect on failure daily and/or throughout the lesson.
Ron’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
- Stay away from empty slogans that minimize emotions. Find ways to acknowledge and validate the emotional pain and difficulty one experiences when they’re failing and talk about what to do next.
- Encourage and take beautiful risks yourself. Invite kids to give you feedback on your failures.
Recommended Resources:
Listen to S1 Episode 6 with Ron Beghetto
Listen to S2 Episode 7 with Ron Beghetto
My Favorite Failure by Ron Beghetto and Laura McBain
Weaving Creativity into Every Strand of Your Curriculum by Cyndi Burnett
Bruce Tuckman’s Group Dynamics
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!
You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
About Laura McBain:
Laura is the K12 Lab Director of Community and Implementation at the Stanford d.school. In this role, she leads the K12 Lab network and aims to use design thinking to transform education and the world. As a human-centered designer, her work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design. She is an advocate for equity and social justice work and is leading experiments to ensure more students have access to an innovative educational experience that will help them thrive in a changing world. Formerly Laura was the Director of External Relations at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. As the Director of External Relations, Laura traveled the globe designing and leading professional development focused on the implementation of progressive education, school transformation, deeper learning and equity initiatives. She has served as a principal of two HTH sites and has taught middle and high school classes in public charte...
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome back Dr. Ron Beghetto along with Laura McBain, Co-Director of the K12 Lab at the Stanford d.school. Ron and Laura recently came out with a new book, “My Favorite Failure: How Setbacks Can Lead to Learning and Growth”. As a human-centered designer, Laura’s work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design and innovative educational experiences.
Listen in to learn about Ron and Laura’s personal favorite failures, the relationship between expectations and failure, how to start the school year off with sharing favorite failures, and the valuable difference between mistakes and failures. The duo also shares their best tips and advice for new teachers as well as how to get students to push through feelings of failure so that they can learn and grow from it.
Questions Answered:
Why is it important to acknowledge and talk about emotions in school?
Are we more willing to take risks when we don’t know the potential consequences?
Are we more likely to experience failure when we do not know anything about the environment?
What types of failure are the most impactful for students? (ie. F letter grades, public failure)
...and more!
Laura’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
- Start talking about failure more.
- Make sure the work you’re designing for young people are worth the failure. How do you design real life examples where students are taking on work of consequence?
- Provide multiple opportunities for students to reflect on failure daily and/or throughout the lesson.
Ron’s Tips for Teachers and Parents:
- Stay away from empty slogans that minimize emotions. Find ways to acknowledge and validate the emotional pain and difficulty one experiences when they’re failing and talk about what to do next.
- Encourage and take beautiful risks yourself. Invite kids to give you feedback on your failures.
Recommended Resources:
Listen to S1 Episode 6 with Ron Beghetto
Listen to S2 Episode 7 with Ron Beghetto
My Favorite Failure by Ron Beghetto and Laura McBain
Weaving Creativity into Every Strand of Your Curriculum by Cyndi Burnett
Bruce Tuckman’s Group Dynamics
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!
You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
About Laura McBain:
Laura is the K12 Lab Director of Community and Implementation at the Stanford d.school. In this role, she leads the K12 Lab network and aims to use design thinking to transform education and the world. As a human-centered designer, her work focuses on understanding the ecosystem of education and finding meaningful opportunities for disruptive design. She is an advocate for equity and social justice work and is leading experiments to ensure more students have access to an innovative educational experience that will help them thrive in a changing world. Formerly Laura was the Director of External Relations at the High Tech High Graduate School of Education. As the Director of External Relations, Laura traveled the globe designing and leading professional development focused on the implementation of progressive education, school transformation, deeper learning and equity initiatives. She has served as a principal of two HTH sites and has taught middle and high school classes in public charte...
Previous Episode
THROW BACK: Infusing Creativity in Classroom with Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers
How do you find joy in your classroom and infuse creativity into your students’ curriculum? In this throwback episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood revisit their discussion with Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers, an Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State.
Susan teaches graduate courses in creativity, chairs the curriculum committee, and serves on leadership teams of various departments across campus dedicated to infusing creative learning into their teaching and learning practices. Her focus is educating the next generation of creativity experts who will utilize their degree in creativity in diverse professional and personal arenas.
“Good teaching is creative teaching.” - Susan Keller-Mathers
Tune in to learn how to infuse creativity into your curriculum and how to find joy every single day you walk into your classroom!
You’ll gain insight into the importance of the practitioner-scholar model, the difference between teaching creativity and creative teaching, and the best practices for nurturing long-term professional learning in teachers. Susan also gives great advice for teachers who are overwhelmed or challenged with constraints in the classroom.
“You have to be an advocate for creativity outside of your classroom to do it in your classroom. You can close your door and you can do what you want to do, which is what a lot of teachers want to do, but you must also be that teacher leader who helps others understand the value of it. Then, it becomes more embedded in the educational environment because you can’t do it in isolation.” - Dr. Susan Keller-Mathers
Susan’s Tips for Teachers:
- Your attitude and energy make a difference in the classroom.
- Remember why you’re an educator and come in refreshed and ready to engage with your students.
- Always think about how you can meet the needs of your students and bring out their creative thinking.
About Susan Keller-Mathers:
Susan Keller-Mathers is an Associate Professor at the Center for Applied Imagination at SUNY Buffalo State. Susan holds a BS in Elementary Education, an MS in Creativity, and an Ed.D in Curriculum and Instruction. She teaches graduate courses in creativity, chairs the curriculum committee and serves on leadership teams of various departments across campus dedicated to infusing creative learning into their teaching and learning practices.
Susan’s focus is educating the next generation of creativity experts who will utilize their degree in creativity in diverse professional and personal arenas. For nearly three decades she has continued the development of the Torrance Incubation Model (TIM) to infuse creativity into lesson, unit, course and training frameworks, develop creative learning and creative problem-solving initiatives in educational and business institutions and travel the globe teaching creativity to international educators on five continents.
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Follow Cyndi and Matt on Linkedin.
You can also find The Fueling Creativity Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
Next Episode
Using Play and Imagination to Engage Active Citizenship with Zviko Kanyoka
What does a design thinking program for children look like? Let’s find out!
In this episode of the Fueling Creativity in Education podcast, Dr. Cyndi Burnett and Dr. Matthew Worwood welcome Zviko Kanyoka, a Project Manager for placemaking programs at Play Africa. Zviko is currently preparing to scale Play Africa's Design Thinking with Children programs across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering children with creative skills by encouraging active citizenship within their communities.
Listen in to learn how Zviko’s background in architecture inspires her curriculum design and her work with children in the classroom. She sheds light on how children can actively participate in designing their learning environment along with the opportunity educators have to create workshops for learning creative skills, communication skills, spatial awareness and connectivity, problem-solving, and much more!
Zviko talks about methods of teaching kids about climate change and environmental conservation, the most important part of engaging children in your community, and the importance of having the freedom to play as a child, especially within African communities.
“To value play is to value our imagination, to value our creativity, and continually entertaining the idea that we always have an option to create new models of being.” – Zviko Kanyoka
Plus, you’ll learn how Play Africa’s Design Thinking with Children program is making a direct impact on their communities and her strategy for scaling and expanding the program.
“We’re centering children’s varied experiences, feelings, and needs and we’re helping learn how to identify social challenges and creative problem solve through ideating, prototyping, and testing possible solutions for safer and more playful communities.” – Zviko Kanyoka
Zviko’s Design Thinking with Children Workshop Framework:
- Transfer your workshop from the school to a communal workspace in your community, like a library. Familiarize your students to the environment and have them think of ways they would transform the space.
- Get your students to ideate, draw, and visualize ideas for transformation they want to see in those spaces.
- Encourage them to gather materials, then have a session for prototyping their transformations.
Recommended Resources:
Listen to the episode with Tamara Doleman
Listen to the episode with Dr. Vlad Glaveanu
Subscribe to our monthly newsletter!
Eager to bring more creativity into your home or classroom?
Access various creativity resources and tools & listen to more episodes of The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast by visiting www.CreativityandEducation.com.
What to learn more about Design Thinking in Education?
Do you want to build a sustained culture of innovation and creativity at your school? Visit WorwoodClassroom.com to learn how Design Thinking can promote teacher creativity and support professional growth in the classroom.
Have a question? Email Dr. Burnett and Dr. Worwood at [email protected]!
You can also find The Fueling Creativity in Education Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Audible, and PodBean! Make sure to rate, review, and share the podcast if you enjoy it!
About Zviko Kanyoka:
Zviko Kanyoka is a Project Manager for placemaking programmes at Play Africa with a background in architecture. Her work is driven by her passion for supporting children’s creative expression and right to the city through participatory development. She's currently preparing to scale Play Africa's Design Thinking with Children programme across Sub-Saharan Africa, empowering children with creative skills through encouraging their active citizenship within their communities.
Follow Zviko on Instagram
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