Reframing Success
Failing up and why I don't grade my children
Most of learning is failing. I remember vividly attempting to learn how to ride a longboard when I was 20. I had some great friends who loved to skateboard, and still do now, into their 40s with all their children, and they were teaching me. Most of my “learning” consisted of me falling over and over again, and praying that I would not break a bone. Thankfully, I didn’t. I also never mastered the longboard. Which never really bothered me, until this winter when my boys all got different variations of skateboards. Now I wish I could be a cool mom who skateboards, but alas, I am not.
The Joyful Dwelling is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a subscriber.
I think the crux of learning and what makes it so difficult is that in order to learn, we must fail. It is part and parcel of mastery. Or even just, averagery? You get what I mean. Even if we don’t intend to master something, to learn the basics, failing is part of the learning process. This seems like something we should all come to expect, but for some reason, it's the thing that frustrates us the most. I think that is what divides people into two camps: those who learn out of necessity and those who love to learn. I thought I loved to learn until I met my husband. He is a true lover of learning. I am more of a, I love to learn fun things, and the moment it gets hard, I am not really interested anymore. Case in point: in 2020, when time was nonexistent and we did not know when life would return to what it once was, my husband decided to learn to bake sourdough. I know many people did this, but my husband made it his mission to master it. He would feed his starter, read books, watch tutorials, and bake loaves of bread every other day. I am not exaggerating when I say we had loaves and loaves of bread in our home at all times. And some days, he would underbake it or bake it for too long. Some days it was too dense, or too airy, and I watched him fail up every day. He took every bad loaf and used it as a tool for progress. Here was the most interesting thing about his constant trial and error: he never got angry when a loaf turned out disappointing. He would smile, make notes on where he went wrong, watch more tutorials, read more, and try again. It is something to behold when someone fails and comes back stronger and more determined. By the end of that year, he had not only mastered sourdough but also every type of bread he attempted, especially my personal favorite, cinnamon rolls.
This is the approach I held close to my heart when I started homeschooling. I wanted our kids to be more like my husband, and less like me, when it came to learning. I, too, wanted to learn how to be more like my husband and cultivate a love of learning for its own sake, regardless of the outcome. I am slowly adapting that mentality and working hard to pass it on to our children. When reading is difficult, or math feels like another language, I remind my kids that this is something totally new to them and that it will take a long time to master. That their siblings and peers may master something before them, and that's ok. Everyone is on their own journey. We don’t need to compete, compare, or keep up with anyone else. It’s me against me.
This is why I don’t give my children a grade, and why I don’t think grades are actually helpful in many ways. I understand why a traditional school would use them, but I do not think they have been beneficial to kids and their progress. The grading system began in the 1800s, when Yale and Harvard were trying to figure out how to measure learning using metrics and percentages. Public education began using the same approach to measure success as classrooms grew in size and individual progress became harder to determine. There was some resistance, but overall, the grading system as we know it now is the standard. This was also a way for schools to communicate about students’ abilities. As I said, I understand that something like this was created, especially in the early 1900s, when education was expanding, and schools were being built at a rapid pace.
Here is my issue: it gives value to something that I don’t think we can quantify. Yes, we can see by someone's ability to read IF they can read. But that is all it tells us. It does not give us information about that person’s ability for comprehension, practical application, or HOW they are learning. It only tells us where that person is on their journey RIGHT NOW. And it does not paint a complete picture. As a child, I was an average student. How do I know? Well, all my grades were bs and cs. It did not matter that I loved to read and write or that I had mastered some aspects of math; I did not excel on tests. I got nervous when I had to read aloud, so I was considered an average student. Once I was nice and labeled, my brain took that on and decided that that was all I would ever be, average. I would never master anything, because, according to my grades, even though I was reading more than my classmates, working alongside my family on a farm,, and learning all about how to run a business in high school, I was average. I worked every summer from the time I was 14, learning the value of money, building a work ethic, and how to engage with people of all ages and races. I was learning customer service and how to disarm conflict in a professional setting. I learned about time management, how to run a bakery, how to convert fractions, how to plan what to bake, and how to determine and prepare for slow or busy seasons, all by the time I was 17, but my grades stayed the same and I was average. This is not to imply that I am better than anyone else for knowing these things; what it means is that I was mastering skills in different ways that a simple school grade could not possibly measure.
I know grades have a place; the school system is built completely around them, so they must have a place. I just don’t want them to take up any space in our homeschool. Learning is not linear. If a runner slows his pace during a marathon to run more successfully overall, I can’t label him a slow runner. I cannot grade my son on his ability because he is still learning. Maybe he struggles with math, but he is reading books for hours at a time. Perhaps my son, who struggles with reading, would not score high on a test, but when he listens to an audiobook, he can recount every detail and identify foreshadowing, character vices, and virtues. One loves art and is naturally gifted in it, another is great at math and masters new concepts quickly. These are the things that a simple grade cannot encompass. Just because someone is failing while learning something does not mean they are failing. They are in the PROCESS of learning, and there is a difference. I failed at longboarding because I gave up, not because I fell more than I stayed on the board. My husband mastered sourdough not because he didn’t fail, but because he kept working toward his goals and learned from his failures.
Once we accept that failing is not a flaw but a necessary part of life, especially in learning, we will be able to come to the table of homeschooling with a more realistic approach. That is what I am taking into this new year. I am going to embrace all the challenges of learning how to be a better wife and mother. It will REQUIRE that I fail daily, but that will only make those small steps of progress more noticeable, and those moments of failure will feel more like opportunities to learn rather than to judge myself and my shortcomings.
What is your underrated skill set?
Favorite Saint who failed up?
What is something you want to master in 2026?
What is your underrated skill set? - good question and good point for self reflection. Once we clear the weeds of negative self talk, there are more skills and talents than we realize. One of mine--I think, explaining things? I can grasp complicated ideas quickly enough to take action, and deeper understanding comes later. I use this at work in meetings to help translate between departments, or I have, historically. the other side of the coin is i get frustrated when people are bad at explaining and we spend 30 minutes trying to get on the same page about an idea I feel like I have figured out.
Favorite Saint who failed up? - I was just listening to a Manly Saints podcast about St John the Harvester, bad things kept happening but he discovered his Christian heritage and gave voluminously to the poor and ended up performing miracles before and after his death. I he didn't let life setbacks discourage him--he glorified them!
What is something you want to master in 2026? - Too many things. Too many. All the things. I'm trying not to look too far ahead. But--if I can keep my prayer life burning throughout this year I'll call it a win.