An example of failing forward

There are lots of fancy cute inspirational messages out there about "failing forward" or how failure leads to success. The problem is that sometimes when you fail you don't always get to see the successes.

Original image: https://goo.gl/J2vNu5

One thing I've learned over the years is that, as much as I want instant results, that's not the way it works. When I got my first Snowball mic, it was a year or two before I started using it on a regular basis by doing webinars for staff. It took another year or so for others to realize how beneficial online meetings could be in a large district. Which is why this article about my former district launching online classes caught my eye. Maybe seven years ago...I don't recall exactly now...I helped try online classes as a pilot at the two high schools in that same district. It didn't work for a number of reasons. The LMS was clunky. The teachers we chose were ones that kids wanted to interact with face-to-face, not online. We didn't have our minds quite wrapped around how best to compensate staff without alienating others. We learned a lot, bit in the end, it got dropped due to lack of enrollment. While there has been a number of staff turn over since that project ended, it's good to see that the idea was revisited. Since I've left, I've seen a couple of projects I had worked on get resurrected. While I take no credit for any of the projects today, I do believe that planting seeds of ideas may, sometimes subconsciously, impact decisions made down the road. While I could make you whimsical, inspirational image to make as your desktop background, I'll leave you with this - don't be discouraged when an idea doesn't take off immediately. Sometimes people need to let it percolate for a bit.