Agenda: Monday, November 2, 2009

Quote of the Day: "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb

Learning Target:  
* Create a definition of "failure"
* Understand Road Trip Nation's definition of failure and how it can actually be turned into a learning experience and an opportunity.

Lesson 5:  Road Trip Nation "Success, Risk, and Failure."

Think for a minute about writing an essay.  In school, you are asked to rewrite and rework drafts before you make your final submission.  There is a tangible end, and if you don’t make revisions or follow specific directions, you won’t receive a passing grade.  Life really works that way.  In life, you are constantly rewriting, redrafting, evolving, and adjusting where you want to go and who you want to be.  You never turn in a final draft; you’re just living with a working copy that you keep revising as you change and grow.  Once you get into your head that there is no definite endpoint, that there are no wrong answers on your path to success, it is much easier to shed the fear of failing.  Roadtrip Nation has defined failure as one of the greatest opportunities to learn and improve ourselves, or an acknowledgment that you’re pushing yourself outside your comfort zone.  It is that push outside your comfort zone in which you are making your life happen, not waiting for it to happen to you – that will always be a success regardless of the little failures that occur along the way.

Students will answer these two questions in class:

1.  Read Roadtrip Nation’s definition of failure above.  Now, redefine failure for yourself.  Through this new lens, what does the word “failure” now mean to you? 

2.  Think of a situation when you made something happen for yourself, and it didn’t work out the way you had hoped. What did you learn from that experience? Did the fact that you “failed” really matter in the long run? Explain.