Of course, as educators, we want our students to achieve. And we want them to push themselves, to strive beyond their current ability, to take risks and to embrace failure as an essential part of learning and of doing anything worthwhile.
But which message is the loudest? Which story are your students hearing? Which do they perceive as more important? Achievement or failure?
Because achievement is easy. You just choose the easy task. When we don’t have to try very hard, we rarely fail.