These pictures represent one of my fondest teenage memories.  Every year when they pop up in my Facebook memories, I have some pretty happy nostalgic moments.  But it may not be for the reason you think when looking at them.

These are a few members of my church youth group.  I doubt you are having trouble identifying me, but if you are, thank you for that.  I'm the one in the jeans and blue shirt.  These two pictures were taken on a 100-degree day in a parking lot in Atlanta, GA.  My youth group drama team had traveled down during the Olympic Games to perform street drama and pray with people.  This was our first day. 

We arrived in the notorious church van and after sitting there for a while, our youth minister came out and said, "This is going to take some time. Settle in."  He did not inform us that the building we had been assigned to sleep in had been condemned by the city and that they were trying to find us somewhere to stay for the week. We spent nine hours in that parking lot. After a while, the van became too hot to stay in, so we pulled out a sleeping bag and put it in the parking lot. We played games and told stories and laughed our heads off.  Other groups were having similar problems, so they were also in the parking lot and we got to meet them and play games with people we otherwise wouldn't have met.  (I think I threw horseshoes for the first time that day because someone in another group brought a set.)  When it began raining, we found that the back door of that school bus was unlocked and commandeered it.  I have no idea who that bus belonged to, but it was much easier getting into it than it was to squeeze back into the church van.  When we finally made our way to our home for the week, a church's gym floor with cold water hose showers on the roof, we were a giddy group of teenagers who had just had the best day ever all because everything had gone wrong.

The thing about life is that things go wrong a lot.  The thing about teaching is that things go wrong a lot.  Whether you have a great day or a terrible day very often is determined by how you react when things go wrong.  If we had sat sulking in the hot van all day, we would have missed out on a day of happy memories.  Instead, these pictures represent a great deal of joy.  

The same thing can happen when things go wrong in your classroom.  If you teach longer than a week, that's going to happen.  You are going to plan something that takes dramatically more or less time than you planned.  You are going to have a student who insists on interfering with your plans.  You are going to solve a problem incorrectly in front of 24 teenagers.  If you react with embarrassment or anger, you will likely make the situation worse (by the way, I'm talking to myself here as I have more than one story of responding poorly).  If you recognize that showing kids how to adapt is just as important a lesson as the one in your plans, you can turn it into a good experience.  

I frequently make mistakes while solving physics problems.  It's not because I'm sloppy; there are just a lot of ways to mess up.  You can forget a negative, punch something wrong in the calculator, or accidentally draw an arrow pointing down when it should have been up.  Usually, a student catches it and corrects me.  I thank them and fix it because I want them to see that these mistakes are easy to make and that they are not irredeemable.  I want them to see that you don't have to be upset about it because you can learn from it.  There are so many things a teenager thinks are needs when they are really wants.  There are so many things they think are critical when they are really just convenient.  They have so much anxiety about things going wrong that we must teach them how to embrace those times.  It will make a difference in their future.

And, of course, I cannot title this post "When Things Go Wrong" without including this poem.

When Things Go Wrong

by Anonymous

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you're trudging seems all uphill,
When the funds are low and the debts are high,
And you want to smile, but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit-
Rest if you must, but don't you quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As every one of us sometimes learns,
And many a fellow turns about
When he might have won had he stuck it out.
Don't give up though the pace seems slow -
You may succeed with another blow.

Often the goal is nearer than
It seems to a faint and faltering man;
Often the struggler has given up
When he might have captured the victor's cup;
And he learned too late when the night came down,
How close he was to the golden crown.

Success is failure turned inside out -
The silver tint in the clouds of doubt,
And you never can tell how close you are,
It might be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight when you're hardest hit -
It's when things seem worst that you must not quit