"Kids these days" is a phrase uttered almost annoyingly when a kid whips out there smartphone, logs onto twitter, or even decides to avoid eye contact and a good old fashioned handshake. I am not a fan of the phrase as it implies there is something wrong with this generation of kids and they are to blame. It's an excuse to just give up on them and let them suffer in the realm of social media and bulky headphones. There are certain behaviors that need to be reinforced and taught to this generation of students, ones that are not defined by the Common Core, Universal Constructs, or any text book in any class. One behavior in particular is confidence. Now before I get rolling I am going to give credit to Dane Barner for accurately defining confidence as a behavior as I potentially started to misidentify it as a skill or trait.
I see kids walking hallways hugging the walls, awkwardly shying away from any sort of interaction with another human. I will talk to kids who fill their sentences with nerves and umms. I see kids who cannot carry on a conversation, wont shake a hand, and feel like no matter what they do they will fail. Some of these can be attributed to poor communication skills, potentially poor collaboration skills, but I think at the heart and soul of it is lack of confidence. I think to accurately define how to foster confidence we need to figure out why kids are not confident. People lack confidence because they have not experienced success. You can have differing levels of confidence for different skills and activities. People lack confidence because failure was an end point. People lack confidence because they were never given the opportunity or chance to redeem themselves. Knowing why people lack confidence therefore can give us insight into what needs to change.
Is there a recipe for confidence? I argue, maybe, but it isn't easy. I think it could bei a flow chart of sorts. We have to acknowledge the "function of failure and the role of success" (thank you Dane). We have to separate cockiness from confidence. In many cases and conversations confidence is defined by success, but I argue that success is, perhaps, determined by failure, or an individuals reaction to failure. My argument is simple, success does not happen without failure. More accurately, success does not occur without application of new learning. And new learning doesn't occur without failure and feedback.
Failure has such a negative connotation, so let's focus on that word. The Titanic failed because it sunk, the Green Bay Packers failed because they lost to the Patriots on Sunday, I failed this Sunday when I ran 50k with a slower pace than I did the year previously. Failure varies, it's that simple. It can be labeled as an error, a mistake, or even the harsh "failure" but all of these words have something in common when it comes to performance. They can be fixed. I can run a faster pace with more training, the Green Bay Packers can come back next year knowing how they could have won that game and tweak their style of play, and the Titanic...well it gave us ideas on how we can potentially prevent such a catastrophe in the future. You can't erase the past through fixing the failures, you can only prepare for the future. Preparation, coaching, teaching, learning, doesn't guarantee success though.
The individual who "failed" must take that new learning and apply it, change, tweak things and then maybe success will happen. This may take awhile, and contributes to perseverance (likely another behavior that needs some fostering). Preparation takes success and failures, and perfection can never really be achieved. Meb is not a perfect marathoner, he still needs training, he still needs coaching, and he will always have areas to improve. Our kids need to know this. We pump it into our kids' brains early that "practice makes perfect," when in reality practice makes us better when we are given the tools and skills necessary to make us better...but that doesn't roll off the tongue.
So let's say that success is equal to application plus new learning, and new learning is reliant on failure. Written out in math terminology, success = application + new learning, and new learning = feedback + failure. Then what is failure equal to? Failure is not equal to anything, but results for a multitude of reasons. It could be lack of preparation, lack of knowledge, execution issues, missed opportunities, misinterpreted feedback, etc. All need to be handled with care. So let's say, for example failure was result of lack of knowledge. Then the proper feedback would be that the individual lacks knowledge, guaranteed it has to be more specific than that. Next that feedback needs to be taught or coached and then applied. Only then can we reach success. Any scientist will tell you that success cannot be determined by one experiment, it needs to be repeated multiple times. I outline this with a specific equation here relating to running (that's the cross country coach in me): Confidence Equation Thoughts.
The biggest thing about all of this is we won't see overnight results in behavior, more than likely. Behavior needs to be repeated and acknowledged. In classes that students take they may lack confidence because they failed an exam or performed poorly on a project. It is up to the teacher at that point to give specific and meaningful feedback so the students can apply it later. Without the chance to reapply their new found skill or knowledge they miss the opportunity for success, and after all success determined by preparation equals confidence. That preparation is so meaningful and it takes persistence and application of necessary skills. The best coaches point out failures and assist with fixing those failures, and they also reinforce the positive behaviors.
We need to foster confident behavior in all students and in a vast array of areas. Whether it is communication, math, art, writing, running, or building. I want confident communicators, confident mathematicians, confident artists, confident writers, confident runners, and confident builders. Imagine the alternative. We get trapped into thinking that confidence is only defined by success, which at the surface might be true. Underneath that surface lies the truth though, that confidence is much more complex than simply success, because success is much more complex than we perceive it.
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