PiCademy and Learning to Fail

This summer I had the opportunity to train with the Raspberry Pi Foundation at PiCademy a face-to-face way for educators to learn both about Raspberry Pis and a crash-course in programming. What I loved about the program was an acronym they provided in the midst of our learning. That acronym was extremely valuable throughout my process and learning a new skill-set I had not embraced before. The acronym was – wait for it – FAIL or “First Attempt In Learning”. Why do I love this? Well the acronym approaches FAILURE in a making context, where it’s okay to “not get it”. As a young person I struggled in math for example, and I desperately did not want to fail anything. However if this idea of failing or failure had been approached from a Growth mindset; I might have thought differently about the challenges I faced in math had I had a FAIL letting me know it was okay in not understanding, as I was learning new math concepts all the time. At PiCademy, when I had a part that didn’t work, or couldn’t figure something out, we moved at a swift pace. Instead I thought of how this was my first attempt at something, and that I was there to “learn” – my aim was to show up, participate, and hopefully get my certificate as a Raspberry Pi certified educator at the end – which I did attain. Now I’ve had a lot of FAIL moments in my life, as as my work picks up I’m still challenging myself and the young folks around me to think, maybe FAIL, and continue to try in the maker way I know we all can.