Friday, August 12, 2016

Endings and Beginnings

As another school year starts I think about how I want to build a positive classroom culture.  A culture that revolves around mutual respect and hard work while having fun.  I want the students to understand that while it is gaming classroom and sometimes we will play, test, and evaluate games the real purpose is to prepare them for the world outside the classroom doors.  To get them to use critical thinking skills, creativity, collaboration, and so much more.  To have them think and be responsible for themselves and their own learning.  It is a fun classroom but it is also a hard working one.  It's finding a balance that we are all happy with and it is always challenging (and exciting) at the start of each year.

The first two days of school flew by and today we come to the close of the week.  I think of this new beginning and how I have changed things to the setup of the classroom and culture to get to what I am working towards.  One of things I am starting this year is celebrating failure.  Failure is necessary if you want to succeed and I want them to start to understand that it is okay.  We all fell many times before we walked.  Programmers will have a lot of trial and error in working through issues, bugs, game crashes, and more.  Concept artists may have to re-do a concept 50 times before it is right.  Life is too short to give up on things because you failed at them before.  You get up and try again until you succeed or you find a work around that accomplishes what you were trying for.  I hope my students never hold back because they are afraid of failure.  If we did everything perfect the first time how boring this life would be.

Failure has been the story of my life. I struggled to read when I was younger, I was introverted all through school, I am one the clumsiest people I know, and I fail at something daily.  Yet here I am extremely happy, a Doctor, and successful in something I love doing.  After this summer I have had a new or at least renewed outlook on how short life is.  My father passed away from stage 4 cancer.  He lived his life to the fullest and had more stories about his adventures (some good, some bad) than most people could even dream of having.  I hope I have those stories one day- stories where I can laugh at all my failures and rejoice in all my successes because it takes both to make an interesting life.