Why Disappointments Are Essential For Raising Awesome Kids.
The 7 Essentials: #6 - A Cultuer of Innovation
As parents, we'll do almost anything to keep our children from disappointments. Teachers are almost as bad. We want everyone to have a participation award to honor their efforts. In our world they are all winners. This is such a wonderful quality we all share but in doing so we must be careful to encourage our children's efforts without undermining the develop of skills essential to handle disappointments and discouragement.
Stick with me here. When a baby chick is hatched it must break its own way out of its shell or it will not develop the strength it needs to survive. If it receives any assistance from the outside world it will die. Real life is made up of far more loses then wins. We do a disservice to our students if we remove the necessity of innovation to creatively flip failures into stepping stones to success.
The sixth building block in the RHOPE Strategy is a culture of Innovation. This answers the question, “Do I have what it takes?” This is one of the most emotionally volatile elements of all. Your brain and your emotions are often at odds concerning this question. Your brain is the ultimate coach that's laser-focused on how to win the game. For as awesome as your brain is, it hates physical and emotional pain and will do anything to spare you from it. If we don't learn how to handle our emotions they overpower our will to win and take us out of the very situations we must overcome to develop the strength and tools required to step into our dreams and destinies.
Championeers! helps you create this balance through reward levels. This builds in a path for greater and greater achievements while providing safety in failed attempts.
"Nothing is a failure in Championeers! Everyone and Everything is redeemable and re-doable."
Every great inventor knows that what some may deem as failures are actually stepping stones in the journey of success. Only when there is safety in trying things with the freedom to fail will our children reach for the unreachable. A culture of innovation defuses peer pressure because children who learn to deal with failures, injustices and disappointments by flipping them into stepping stones are far more likely to stay on their own course, then follow another’s.
Here is your action item
The key to bringing a culture of innovation into your classroom is to celebrate the journey of exploration, embrace failures as secret successes and to never allow your students to quit.
I used to own a music conservatory that had 600 sessions per week. I had one rule. No one was allowed to quit. They could choose to go on vacation at the end of each term, but they were not allowed to quit mid-session. Why? So they would not develop the mentality that they could just give up when things got hard or they got bored. Neither would I let them out of a lesson if they had not practiced. We simply wrote our own songs out of the very notes that were giving them problems. Some of those student's became gifted song-writers; a skill they would not have developed had sight reading come easily.
Your action item is to establish a “Can Do” mindset by insisting your students complete every task, even if you have to do it with them… and often will.
Together, we can do this!
Deanna
Reward Level Ideas:
Every child receives their motto wristband as a participant on the first day.
Kids understand instant gratification so you may want to build in mini-rewards and privileges assigned to the task at hand. I.e.: line up quietly and walk down the hall in silence and you'll get 5 extra minutes at recess.
Each week students earn a reward sticker for challenges completed. If they miss a challenge they can make it up at any time, even after the unit has completed.
At the end of the unit every child receives their dog tags after the performance.
If students completes all their leadership challenges and attends the performance they can get a collectable reward pin.
Some classes may want a red carpet event in class to watch themselves on video and pass out all final awards to conclude the unit.
There are 7 Essential Elements required for children to be emotionally safe. When these are satisfied, your children are much less likely to succumb to peer pressure because they are empowered with tools to meet their emotional needs. We call these 7 Elements The RHOPE Strategy; Rinehart’s Hierarchy of Peer Empowerment.
(c) 2015 Championeers.
