Failure Before Success

In this collection, Warner, a National Board Certified Teacher, former education policy advisor in the U.S. Senate and White House, and education journalist, compiles an international array of accounts that encapsulate firsthand the mistakes and failures (both big and small) of educators on a global scale to demonstrate that to become an expert, one first needs to fail. To underscore this point in her introduction, Warner dismisses the notion of “perfect teaching” as a myth and instead claims that veteran educators learn from their mistakes. The following chapters illustrate that educators need to be aware of and accept their mistakes and failures, and Warner advises analytical reflection to mitigate the negative aspects of failure. The volume deftly provides a path for educators to learn from their mistakes while identifying a simple set of knowledge and skills for all educators to use to ensure they have a successful, healthful, and positive impact on their students. This is a must-read for novice and experienced educators desiring the wisdom to derive meaning from their mistakes and to continue to change and grow for their students. Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals. * Choice Reviews *
When beginning educators learn from experienced teachers, it often appears to them that expert instruction emerges by magic. Failure Before Success dispels the myth of perfect teaching and demonstrates that veteran educators have learned from many mistakes and missteps. Julie Warner’s anthology will be very useful in any general pedagogy course for beginning teachers and will likely be read with great interest by veteran teachers who will no doubt relate to the brave testimonies of despair, hope, and transformation honestly shared throughout the text. -- Gilberto Q. Conchas, Wayne K. and Anita Woolfolk Hoy Professor at the Pennsylvania State University
Experience is the great teacher. And yet our educational culture too often leaves educators reluctant to talk openly about their missteps. That's what makes Julie Warner's new book, Failure Before Success, so valuable-- it offers the kind of hard-earned wisdom that can make all the difference. Teachers everywhere, new and old alike, would do well to check it out. -- Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute
We know that students can learn from failure, and this book demonstrates that teachers can too. These engaging essays offer an invitation for teachers to make meaning from their mistakes, and continue to grow and evolve in service to their students. -- James M. Lang, PhD, author of Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It
Any educator with an evolving learners’ mindset knows it’s quite liberating when we realize choosing to take risks, be compliant, or daring to reimagine will lead to some inevitable frustrations. The transformative liberating power comes when we chose to redefine our struggles with ownership and perspective shifts, through reflection, self interrogation and recentering our learners. These introspective educators have explicitly and vulnerably offered to share the often unspoken internal work of a lifetime learner. They have chosen to pay it forward from their own lessons of failure before success and are inviting us to dare to reimagine what’s possible as a learner. -- Madeline Mendon, Youth-Centered Educator
Next year my lessons will be perfect. I will know exactly what I am doing, and I won’t have to change a thing!” I would proclaim at the end of each year of 16-hour teacher-days all 20 years of teaching high school and middle school. And if I hadn’t left to direct a National Writing Project, I would have probably repeated it after my 21st year also. These personal accounts most notably let teachers know that we are not alone. In sharing mistakes made, these educators make us all more compassionate of other educators and of ourselves and give us permission to learn and transform our teaching. Through the reflections of others, readers will discover that it is not the destination; it is the journey. -- Lesley Roessing, former secondary and university educator and author of No More “Us’ and “Them,” Talking Texts, Bridging the Gap, and The Write to Read
This outstanding book by Julie Warner provides a core and essential set of knowledge and skills for teachers that will facilitate their success, well-being and positive impact on students. I believe it should be a staple resource for all teachers. -- Bernadette Mazurek Melnyk, PhD, APRN-CNP, FAANP, FNAP, FAAN, Vice President for Health Promotion, University Chief Wellness Officer, Professor and Dean of the College of Nursing, The Ohio State University