{photo by Alex Proimos on flickr / CC BY-NC 2.0}
“If there's any theme that is more prominent than any others throughout the Great Books, it is the strength that comes from a community founded on common weakness and failure.”
~ Adam Andrews, Center for Lit
Happy Friday!
At the beginning of the school year we mentioned something new we want to try on the blog – a series called Friday Flops. This will be the flip side to Wednesday Wonders, if you will, sharing our not-so-wondrous moments and embracing the small failures that we all experience. After all, our theme this year is “Daring Greatly,” and what’s more daring that being vulnerable with each other when we mess up? We’re all family here, and we want to show and receive grace along the way, because the SLOCA life is incredibly rewarding, but it’s not easy.
We hope you noticed the fantastic quote above and how well it relates to this idea (especially for a school that loves the Great Books!). We desire to be a strong, resilient community that can be real with each other, and celebrate the growth that comes from our failures as well as our victories – our feats and flops.
Now that we’ve finished our staff introductions on the blog, we are ready to dive into this new adventure! We’ve asked a few Team SLOCA members to share their flops on the blog to get us started, and Lisa Wallace is our first brave soul! Mrs. Wallace is our Intermediate Core and Science teacher on both tracks. Here’s her story:
This happened with my Track A Intermediate class last Monday. Thankfully, I realized my mistake before my Track B class!
Intermediate has been studying the determined efforts of Hatshepsut, a female pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, and today was the day to do an in-class directed draw of this fearless leader. After looking through a variety of pictures of her online, I chose the one I thought would work best. As a class, we looked at the picture of the bust/statue, discussing her facial features, her neckline, the headdress, the colors, and even the wear and tear of the bust itself. Finally, I walked the students through the drawing, step by step, as we discussed the physical features of Hatshepsut. As each student completed the art piece, they labeled a spot in their journals where they were to glue in their artwork and later we would add our descriptive paragraph on Hatshepsut. Imagine my disappointment when later that day I found out that we had drawn a famous picture of ………Nefertiti.
Can’t we all relate to that? And it's so good for our students to see that we all make mistakes sometimes (even teachers and parents!), but we can adjust, move on, and still treasure the beautiful artwork that was made and the learning that happened. Thank you so much for sharing, Lisa!
We’re also looking for a few courageous parents who are willing to tell about their small mistakes and “fail” moments on the blog – nothing too personal, of course! Please email Down Home if you have a flop to share. Let’s be open about our common mistakes and weaknesses, and grow stronger!
