What Happens if Students Don’t Finish Their Projects?

One of the most common questions I hear from teachers who are first starting out in project-based learning is, “What do I do about students who don’t finish their projects?” There are some proactive measures we can take. For example, we can use a pre-mortem to help students ask, “What could go wrong?” before they actually create their products. We can set deadlines and have students engage in project management. We can conference with students and help them work through the revision process.

But even so, we are all going to have moments when students fail to finish their projects. As a teacher, I recognize that sometimes it’s because I didn’t design the PBL unit very well to begin with. In this email, I’ll share the story of a few of my own failed projects. Sometimes, though, the issue has to do with individual students and projects that simply didn’t work out because of mistakes they made. I’ll share a process to help guide students through the reflection on these failed projects.

Sometimes Projects Fail

About a decade ago, I had a group of students who had a great concept. They would make a paper mural. It would be shaped like the U.S.-Mexico border and it would have a picture of the Statue of Liberty in the middle with a modern family from Mexico on the right and immigrants from Ellis Island in the early 1900s on the left. They cut tiny pieces of various colors from magazines and painstakingly glued these on before school. They created the whole border wall from papier-mâché. It was a powerful, symbolic work of art from their own lived experience.

However, we ran into a wall when it came to presenting our wall. We wanted to share it on First Fridays with the art community. However, I couldn’t figure out how to make the launch happen. My students suggested that we send it to the district office but again, they didn’t want it.

In the end, it was a failed launch.

I had other projects fizzle in a matter of two or three days, like the Fantasy Football math project that didn’t take hold or the career exploration documentary or the video game project (we had created games on Scratch but wanted to make games you could actually download on your phone). Sometimes it was timing. Other times, it was my own incompetence.

But here’s the thing. You will have failed projects as a teacher. Every time we choose to innovate, we step into the unknown. There’s no guarantee it will work. This is true in teaching, in projects, and in creative work. Innovation is risky.

However, it turns out that abandoned projects are a part of any creative work. This goes beyond the teaching profession. It’s sort of the secret that nearly every creative profession doesn’t talk about. Makers are always abandoning projects.

Creative Types Often Abandon Projects

I’m a maker. I’m often creating blog posts, books, and sketch videos. But I also like doing hands-on STEM-style projects at home as well. But being a maker, I often have projects that don’t work out. I used to feel guilty about those projects (similar to feeling guilty about failing to finish books), like somehow I was a quitter or I lacked grit or I was taking the easy way out.

However, as I began to interview painters and engineers and filmmakers and architects and entrepreneurs, I found that this was a universal experience. To

be productive, you have to be good at quitting.You need to know when a project isn’t working and cut it loose. I’ve come to realize that every maker has a cutting room floor with a ton of work that didn’t make the “final cut.” We iterate and revise and put things on hold. And that’s okay. It’s part of the creative journey. Regardless of the industry or the discipline, there are a few ways we abandon projects. Note that these go on a spectrum from unfinished to finished. I created the following framework as a way to view our so-called “failed projects.”

• Scrap It: This is a permanent delete option, where you realize that the project was simply a really bad idea.
• File It Away: Here’s where you feel stuck, so you leave the project unfinished and then potentially pick it up months or even years later.
• Iterate: Here, you don’t shelve the project entirely, but instead, you choose to make massive revisions. You might even mash it up with a different project.
• Keep it private: With this option, you still finish your project but you ultimately choose not to share it with an audience. Here, you’re not abandoning the project so much as abandoning the launch.

Note that some of the most prolific creative types of all kinds of projects in all four of those categories.

Every project helped me hone my skills. I can’t consider any of those projects a waste of time because they all helped me become more creative.

What This Means for Teachers

You will have failed projects. Students might be disinterested and unmotivated. Or the project starts taking way too long and you know it’s not working. Maybe it’s an alignment issue as you realize that your students aren’t mastering the standards. Sometimes, you’ll iterate and modify. Or you might finish and say, “that wasn’t great but at least it’s done.” Other times, you’ll have to go back to your students and say, “we need to scrap this project.” Although this isn’t fun, it’s a chance to model humility and to show students that sometimes in creative work, you need to quit.

I’ve used the following reflection questions to help me figure out if it’s time to abandon a project:

Why do I feel this project isn’t working?

Is this something I can tweak and revise or do I need to abandon this? Could we try this again later?

What are the contextual factors making this a challenge? How could I better address these challenges?

Is there a better way to teach these standards? A new project concept? A new approach?

How will the students respond? Will they be relieved or disappointed? How will I help them navigate these emotions?

Note that these reflective questions help spur my internal monologue. However, it sometimes helps to talk to another teacher or to bring your class into the discussion. When I taught eighth grade, we would discuss these ideas in our student leadership team (which consisted of any kid who wanted to bring a sack lunch in on Thursdays and help make class-wide decisions). If you missed the leadership team meeting protocol, you can download it here:

 Download the Student Leadership Team Meeting Template

This idea of quitting also has implications for students.

What this Means for Students

We often see phrases like, “never give up” and “winners never quit” in schools. However, students need to know the art of quitting. They need to learn how to be reflective about their work and figure out when it’s time to abandon a project. As educators, we can help them to determine when it’s time to pivot, quit, or persevere.

When my students did Genius Hour projects, I had some students who wanted to change topics every other day. As a guide, I would help them to reflect on why they were wanting to change. Was it that they had too many interests? Was it the fear of missing out? Were they afraid that they wouldn’t do a good enough job on the finished product? In these moments, I had to push them a little bit to decide on one thing and to finish. Other times, though, they worked on a project and ran into a barrier they couldn’t get past. Sometimes, I’d have to say, “I need you to persevere and keep going even if it’s not fun right now.” Often, they were just experiencing project fatigue. However, other times they were truly done and needed to shelve the product and start something new.

Initially, I would cajole students to finish their projects. I would threaten an F as an incomplete. However, I realized that the focus isn’t the product. It’s not even the process. It’s the learning. A student could have an unfinished project that was a failed experiment and still manage to master the standards. So, I would ask the students the following questions:

Why do you want to abandon this project?

How far along are you on the project? Are you wanting to quit because you’re not meeting deadlines or because the project really is a failed experiment?

What would happen if you finished it?

Do you want to get rid of it completely, put it on hold, or do a rehaul and revision?

What would you need from me so that you can succeed on this project? (i.e. time or resources)

Although these are self-reflection questions, they are also questions you can use in one-on-one conferencing with students. When this happens, your goal is to get to the root cause of the quitting. Is it fear or is it a realization that the work isn’t worth pursuing? Are they wanting to quit because they are behind and haven’t managed time wisely or have they made attempts and it’s simply not working?

Note, this is why I love design thinking. It helps students stay on track with their time and it build interdependency. And yet, even so, there will be times when your most self-directed, hardest working students will want to abandon a project because it actually isn’t working. And that’s okay. They need to learn when to quit.

I’ve created a downloadable resources with these reflections as well as the video I shared above. You can show the students the video and let them see where they are on the continuum. They can then fill out the reflection questions.

 Download the Failed Experiment Continuum and Reflection

What are your options when students aren’t finishing projects?

So, you’re at a point in a project where a student isn’t finishing the project. Here are a few options:

1. Ask students to complete the projects on their own time. You might need to provide a time and place if they don’t have the resources at home.
2. Excuse students from another assignment or project to give them extended time to finish this initial project. This is ideal for students who need to do a massive overhaul.
3. Allow students to quit a project when it truly is a “failed experiment.” Help find ways for students in this place to succeed on another project.
4. If the project is actually going well, you might need to affirm students and ask them to stick with their project and with their deadlines.

There’s an added layer with group projects, where different members might have different ideas around next steps. In these moments, you might need to meet with the small group and talk through the next steps together.

It also helps to take a preventative approach. When students use the LAUNCH Cycle as a creative framework within PBL, they have specific stages they go through, which minimizes some of the desire to quit out of project fatigue. They engage in project management, which reduces the likelihood of giving up because they are falling behind. Because they have a thorough ideation phase, they tend to have a solid idea that they don’t want to abandon. And because there is more ownership, there’s a desire to see it succeed.

Even then, there are times when students will need to let go of a project. And that’s okay. It’s part of what it means to be a maker. After all, a failed project does not mean a failure in learning. If we treat our failed projects as experiments, we can recognize that the goal is not a perfect finished product but rather the mastery of he learning targets that happens through the journey.