How Do I Fail Forward?
Each session begins with a Treasure Hunt. Last week’s treasure hunts were designed around this session’s guiding question: How do I fail forward? Clues were created that could only be solved incrementally—clues that required multiple failed attempts before success. For example, Wordle – the word guessing game that gives you more information with every guess, even when you’re wrong. The DS heroes uncovered clues using a homemade version of “Wurdal” (try and see if you can solve it here!). The younger studios worked through similar challenges—key words revealed one letter at a time. Each incorrect attempt wasn’t a setback; it was progress. The prizes for the treasure hunts were airplanes and surfboards to remind us to keep moving forward, even when the ride gets bumpy.
Spark Studio
In the Spark Studio, failing forward this week showed up in small, meaningful moments. Sparks have been learning how to give clear, specific feedback—especially around studio maintenance. Learning to give and receive feedback takes courage, practice and a belief that feedback is a helpful step forward not a bad thing! Through each Journey Meeting, learners examined their habits and routines, setting goals for growth. They discovered an important truth: you don’t have to be bad at something to get better. And if you stop challenging yourself, improvement stops too.
As heroes continued their exploration of ocean creatures during CHOICE work cycle, one learner struggled to attach the tooth of a narwhal. After talking through her ideas out loud and trying again (and again), she found a solution that worked. Several learners experienced similar moments this week—repeated attempts, growing frustration, and then breakthrough. Watching them fail over and over only to emerge with a better solution is beautiful.
After heroes looked at pictures of different types of coral, they created their own coral, combining their creations into the Spark coral reef. This naturally led to learning about symbiotic relationships—some relationships that help both partners, some that help one, and even some where one partner is harmed. A game of freeze tag reinforced the idea of helping one another, with one hero perfectly naming it “friendship.”
As heroes learned about all the amazing capabilities of the octopus, they experimented with getting a bag of water through a small hole, a turkey baster to simulate propulsion, and how camouflage can work.
The week ended talking about sea animal adaptations and transferring that idea to upcycle materials to spark some fresh ideas and step up the challenge level for heroes.
Other highlights this week include a couple heroes designing chalk monsters, two heroes making their own board game, and a truly captivating magic show! Each creation reflected persistence, experimentation, and growth.
Fire Studio
Fail High-Fives—little celebrations when something goes wrong—launches highlighting world-class heroes who failed on their way to success, and Highpoint shares about moving forward after missteps are all helping to normalize failure as part of the journey. This week, heroes also voted forward to create a new accountability system, celebrated earning a chips-and-salsa party from the Gem Game, and met with parents and guides for Journey Meetings to reflect on half a year of growth and plan what comes next.
Heroes also explored the idea that sometimes failing forward means failing repeatedly. When faced with roadblocks, they practiced choosing whether to persist with the same plan or revise it. A powerful physical experience made this lesson tangible: heroes bounced back and forth in stretchy bands, switching places and high-fiving in the middle. As the pace increased, the bands began to fall. Together, heroes problem-solved and reflected. They connected this experience to studio life—recognizing that when they “bump into” one another emotionally or socially, they can still fail forward by repairing relationships and learning from conflict.
Week 2 of our Physics: Newton’s Toy Shop Quest looked ‘Beautifully Different’ from Week 1 — and in the best possible way. Last week, Heroes were ahead in checking off challenges in Journey Tracker. This week, they were ahead in something else entirely: deep engagement together. They were so absorbed in making boats float with the most weight and testing how elasticity can gently resist gravity that they fell a bit behind on Journey Tracker. They had the opportunity to make improvements and try again. Reflecting, noticing issues, and improving is one way of failing forward. And that’s where the phrase beautifully different comes in.
Those early-week challenges around buoyancy and elasticity intentionally set the stage for Thursday’s squad challenge: the Egg Drop. Heroes designed and built elastic+rope nets to catch an egg from different heights, testing whether their designs could absorb force without breaking.This challenge brought out meaningful moments — frustration, pausing work to gather and vote on what felt fair, redesigns that took longer than expected, and tough choices about time. It was a very different rhythm than the week before.
At Thursday’s Launch, Heroes were given a choice: Catch up on Journey Tracker… or jump straight into the Egg Drop challenge and plan to catch up later. The vote? 100% Egg Drop.
Did everyone finish? Not yet.
Did half the studio choose to stay in from P.E. to keep working? Yes.
Will next week require some extra effort to catch up? Absolutely.
But the real beauty showed up in the process — in the discussions, the voting, the collaboration, the moments of peace and frustration, and the honest conversations about how to make next week better. This is Physics in action. This is learning to fail forward. And this is exactly where growth lives.
DELTA Studio
In the DELTA Studio, failing forward was on full display. During core skills, one hero had attempted her Quill post-assessment again and again over the past sessions. Each time she missed more than the allowed number, she returned to practice lessons. When she finally passed this week—without missing a single question—the joy was unmistakable. Every failed attempt made the success sweeter.
Another powerful example came from a long-term project. Last year, a group of DS boys began the ambitious task of building a Minecraft server from an old Google server. It was far harder than expected. They spent hours learning, failing, and trying again just to hack into the system. This year, they started the next phase—and succeeded. The triumph on their faces reflected not just success, but the joy that comes from perseverance through failure.
In alignment with the session question, DELTA Studio is focusing deeply on Growth Mindset—what it means, what it looks like, and what it sounds like. Heroes are singing Growth Mindset songs and “growing” things as reminders of how we can grow when we choose a growth mindset. Parachute games for P.E. and lots of tribe building activities keep the fun growing as well.
The Zoology quest has been full of curiosity and enthusiasm. Launches included light-hearted discussions—like debating which animal you’d rather be—and deeper conversations about ownership and ethics. Heroes explored vertebrates and created detailed animal posters, making steady progress on their zoos. Their excitement to keep improving their work reflects a willingness to revise, rethink, and grow.
Failing forward means understanding that failure is not the opposite of success—it’s part of the path to it. It’s using mistakes as information, trying again with new insight, and continuing to move forward even when the outcome isn’t perfect. Across all studios, heroes are learning that progress often comes through frustration, repetition, reflection, and resilience; learning to see each failure not as a setback but rather as a nudge forward. Whether it’s a missed assessment question, a collapsing egg-drop design, a broken stretchy band, or a narwhal tooth that won’t stay attached, failure becomes powerful when it teaches us something new. To fail forward is to stay curious, stay brave, and keep going—one attempt at a time.