Fall Road Map Series - Week 3: Failure has a bad reputation. In classrooms and afterschool spaces alike, it's often treated as something to prevent, fix quickly, or quietly move past — rather than something young people can actually learn from. But research tells a different story. Learning scientist Manu Kapur's work on productive failure shows that when young people are given the chance to struggle with a problem before being taught the solution, they often develop deeper, more durable understanding than when they're handed the answer up front. Struggle, it turns out, isn't the obstacle to learning; it's often the mechanism. In the third session of our Fall Road Map Series, we'll bring this idea down to earth. Wyrkshop Makerspace Manager Emily Leinen spends her days watching young people build, break, troubleshoot, and try again. She'll share what the maker mindset looks like in practice — curiosity, iteration, and learning through doing — and why the goal is never to help kids build perfect things. It's to help them believe they can try. You'll leave with a grounded way of thinking about failure — not as a stopping point, but as data — and practical ideas for making that shift feel safe for the young people in your own programs.
Emily Leinen's making career started as a young child, in typical 90’s fashion, with Legos and Lincoln Logs. She would constantly find ways to make new products and reinvent everyday items. As a child, her most notable invention was a chipmunk catcher, which caught about seven chipmunks over one summer. She has over a decade of teaching experience in different fields, from water safety to STEAM education. Her favorite way to make is creating educational tools and lesson plans to reinvent how we educate.
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