Welcome to Well THAT Didn't Work

Well That Didn't Work should be a blog with an open author policy. Anyone can send in a story for it.
Hmmm.... https://t.co/w2CsaY90m7

— Doug Robertson (@TheWeirdTeacher) October 25, 2016

It started, as it seems to so often now, with a series of tweets. I am a fifth grade teacher and I'm struggling with my class this year. I've got that perfect mix of kids that makes things difficult. And, since I'm dedicated to freedom and choice in my classroom, I'm having a hard time reconciling the fact that I might have to dial some of those freedoms back with that belief structure.

I'm also a firm believer in honestly online. Too often edutwitter and edublogs only show the best of us. And why wouldn't they? We're taking a risk by writing about our classrooms, we should put our best feet forward. Except when everyone is only putting their best feet forward it's not helping those lessons with two left feet. It's tripping those lessons up. I believe I've pushed this metaphor as far as it will go.

I try to talk about my failures and struggles. I try to be transparent and honest with struggles because I honestly think we're all in this together and it's important that we see each other stumble and fall. Hard.

And I'm not even talking the Fail Forward stuff we see online or the First Attempt In Learning cliches. Maybe you took a risk and it exploded, maybe you just had one of those days when everything was conspiring against you, or maybe you conspired against yourself. We can learn from all of those, and we can better see everyone as human. No one is a Super Teacher. No one has it all figured out. No one should pretend they do.

I think teachers are inherently cool and overwhelmingly conservative when it comes to speaking out. Here's what that means- Everyone wants to be nice to each other for the most part. But no one wants to be the first to jump. It's easy to say, "Yeah, we should talk about our failures more and more honestly," but it's something completely different to actually write that blog and put it out there, 

This space is for that. Named or anonymous, I hope teachers will talk about the times things went sideways badly. There doesn't even have to be a moral to the story. It doesn't need to end with, "And from that I learned to blah blah blah." Sometimes the problem is enough. I'll take submissions at theweirdteacher@gmail.com, and I'll moderate and edit as needed. I have commenting set to requiring approval, so nothing mean or disrespectful will make it through my filter to the public blog. 

I have no idea how well this will work. I'll figure out a posting schedule when/if I start getting submissions. This is not my space, this is our space. I'm not going to carry it (though Science knows I make enough mistakes I probably could). I'm providing a venue. 

Once again, if you've got something to share that you think fits under the fairly broad umbrella of, "Well THAT Didn't Work" write it up in Docs (or wherever you process words), share it or email it to theweirdteacher@gmail.com. Don't sweat word count or images or anything. Tell us your story. Funny, sad, frustrating, all of the above. Tell me if you want your name on it or if you want it to be by A. Non Mouse. 

*deep breath* Let's see what happens. And, like Elisa says...

@TheWeirdTeacher and if no one contributes ... well then, that didn't work! ;)

— Elisa Pollard (@EMPteacher) October 25, 2016