Have you ever spent a good part of the weekend researching and developing a new lesson plan that you were so excited to teach, only to give it a try in the classroom and realize it was a flop? Maybe the students just didn’t grasp the concept, they weren’t as engaged as you hoped, or they just seemed bored. Maybe, like a good Thanksgiving meal, what took you hours to prepare got consumed or completed in 10 minutes and now you have to improvise for the rest of the period. It’s happened to me more times than I would like to admit, and it can be frustrating and demoralizing. But just as we teach students the importance of trial and error, persevering on learning and learning from our mistakes, we need to recognize that lessons that don’t turn out exactly the way we planned are valuable tools. As educators, we need to reframe that “lesson plan fail” as a valuable learning experience and a positive exercise in constructive feedback. We need to offer ourselves the same grace and encouragement we offer students. While frustration and is understandable, “beating ourselves up” never helps.
Chance are you have seen this before. You may even have a poster of it in your classroom. It is a foundational Growth Mindset maxim.
- First
- Attempt
- In
- Learning
Even if this was our second, third or fourth attempt at finding the “perfect” way to deliver content in a way that engaged and inspired students, or at the very least, taught them the concepts, feedback is always helpful. We can often learn more from our teaching “misses” than our home runs. Maintaining a positive outlook when all of your hard and planning work appears to “flop” can be a challenge, but here are some tips to help you through.
Don’t Take It Personally
It’s unlikely your students came to school with the express intent of bothering you by not learning. If you are teaching something specific and students just aren’t grasping the concept, it’s unlikely students are “pretending” not to understand. Recognize that you may have produced lesson plans that would have been perfect with a different group of students, or even these students on a different day. But if right now it’s not working and it’s not because of classroom management issues, then it doesn’t mean the lesson plans are bad or that you are not an effective teacher – it simply is what it is. It’s not a judgment on you, so don’t take it personally.
Understand That The Students Are Probably Frustrated, Too
Again, students generally care about learning. If the lesson is “missing the mark” you will probably notice that students are visibly frustrated and restless. This will be fertile soil for behavior issues. Instead of continuing to plow on through the lesson at all costs even when you are aware that students aren’t getting a concept, it’s best to just stop. Acknowledge everyone’s frustration. There’s nothing wrong with appearing human in front of your students. They will respect you more if you say, “I sense you are getting frustrated and not understanding the concept. I thought this would be a good way to teach this, but let me give it some more thought and we can try it again tomorrow” than if you insist on continuing with the lesson and ultimately get irritable. You getting frustrated will not help them understand more.
Eliminate Negative Self Talk
Do you encourage tolerate negative self-talk from your students? Of course not! When they say, “This is hard!” or “I stink at this!” what do you say to them? Think of the tried and true Growth Mindset adages that we share with our students, and apply them to your own learning experience. Here are some examples to get you started.
“It seems like it’s time for a new strategy. What else can I try?”
“Challenging problems help me grow.”
“I’m proud of how hard I’m working on this.”
“I haven’t figured out the perfect way to teach this yet.”
Reframe “Failure” as “Feedback”
Be like Tomas Edison who discovered 99 ways NOT to make a lightbulb. You just discovered one way NOT to deliver this particular content to this particular class today.
Smile and Relax
Good news, there are 180 days of school. As none of us are teaching new skills and content on the last day of school, you have tomorrow to try the lesson again. Nobody died. Try and keep it all in perspective.
Take Responsibility for Changing the Energy in the Room
It is a recurring theme in my teaching philosophy that as teachers, our energy speaks louder than our words. If a lesson isn’t going well, if there is frustration in the room, we need to step up and take responsibility for changing that energy. I always recommend that teachers have a repertoire of short “energy changers” in their teaching toolbelt. Short activities, pattern interrupts or media bytes that they know their class enjoy and can get everyone laughing or singing. A favorite song, a Youtube video clip, a game of “silent ball”, a GoNoodle dance- it will be different for every age group and every group of students. Research indicates that 17 seconds being positively focused is enough to “change the channel” of what’s playing out in your room. However, it’s hard to make the leap from frustrated to fun in that amount of time. If the energy in the room is pretty negative, quietly regrouping to neutral might be a more realistic goal. This would be the perfect time to employ a quick “Brain Break” activity. Any of the activities in Positive Mindset Habits for Teachers book would work. Some of them take a couple of minutes, but it’s time well spent if active learning has already stopped.
Next time your carefully crafted lesson is not going as planned, try and remember these tips. It happens to all of us!
If you have really bad timing and it happens when you are being formerly observed, remember that your administrator is human too. It’s likely had lessons that didn’t go as planned. You are probably within your contractual rights to ask them for another observation. If you handle yourself in a positive and professional way and present your administrator with some learnings after the fact, and it may even work out in your favor.
