Frank Dill has been teaching science in Tampa, Fla., since 2011. One of his favorite projects is a student-generated science magazine on Flipboard called “Raven about Science”:My students swear that my favorite word is the F-word. Fail. My students fail a lot. I make sure of it. I try to provide my students with an environment where it is safe to fail because I am trying to teach them how to be resilient.I show students where I have failed and how I take steps to improve my performance. eLearning has provided ample material for these demonstrations. Being vulnerable to students in this way builds rapport. Students are more trusting and willing to share their failures and misunderstandings when they know it is possible to improve.Failure is important in science. Lab experiments go wrong all the time. A reasonable hypothesis may be totally wrong. Data and evidence from research will reveal what is valid no matter how unlikely.My students do a lab that uses hydrogen and oxygen gas to launch projectiles across the room. This is a very popular lab. What is less popular is my grading scale. I put pieces of tape on the floor indicating how far the projectiles must fly to get a particular letter grade. The students get unlimited attempts, but to get an A, they must launch their projectile past the farthest mark. Students complain that this is unfair, but I tell them that nature is grading them, not me. Failure is an option. In the real world, the forces of nature will tell you when you have failed. Gravity will make a defective bridge fall, and even NASA loses rockets. In science, progress is made by learning from failure.Learning how to fail is important for students at every academic-achievement level. Some of our highest-achieving students are having mental-health issues because of their fear of failure. As teachers, we must demystify failure for them. Failure is part of life. They shouldn’t live in fear and anxiety over failure. They shouldn’t be willing to harm themselves if they fail.Learning to fail isn’t just a lesson for the science classroom. It’s a life skill. In an era of high-stakes testing, students need to know that it’s OK to fail. No one gets everything right on the first try. Sometimes it takes multiple attempts. Teach students to be resilient. Show them how they can bounce back from failure. As long as students are growing and improving, progress is being made., Three science educators share their favorite instructional strategies, including incorporating a sense of play in their classes., The document discusses various teaching approaches and strategies for science. It begins by defining science as a process of logical thinking and testing hypotheses, rather than just memorizing facts. It then outlines three components of science education: knowledge, process skills, and attitudes..