In being and becoming teachers of writing we must allow spaces for bad teaching to occur. This doesn’t mean I’m advocating bad teaching. But if you take risks and try new things, you are bound to have lessons that don’t go just the way you would have liked. Risks and experimentation are essential components of growth and evolution. Hence, if you’ve never had a bad lesson, you haven’t tried enough new things. If you’ve never failed, it means you’ve been clinging too tightly to the outline. Occasional teaching failure is an important part of being and becoming a master teacher.

As teachers and as human beings living on the good planet earth, we are not defined by our success, rather, by how we address our failures. A successful teacher and human is not failure-free. A successful teacher and human is failure-overcoming.