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How teachers can help students achieve true success
Filed Under "At-risk" students, motivating students, positive climate, underachieving students
One of the things I try to do in all my classes is make students aware of what they can do to help themselves be more successful in and out of school. If truth be told, making students aware of what qualities they need to develop and what strategies they need to employ in order to be successful has become an obsession with me- just ask my husband, Kurt.
When I ask my students to define success, their definition of success invariably includes being rich and famous like rock stars, movie stars or elite athletes.They believe success is all about money and fame. I can remember when I was a teenager I defined success as not living on the family farm. Making it to the big city was my idea of success 
. I could hardly wait to finish school and move to Toronto and be part of that exciting city life that waited for me there. On summer nights I used to sit and watch the fire flies flitting about and imagine they were city lights and dream about what I would do when I lived in the big city.
Of course, success can be defined in many different ways. Recently, I had the opportunity to listen to John Wooden share his notion of true success as part of the TED talk series. (You can listen to him too. I’ve put the video at the end of this post.) Wooden defines true success as knowing you did the best that you were capable of doing to improve your situation. His definition of true success has nothing to do with money or fame. It has nothing to do with being better than anyone else, either. True success is all about being the best that you can be given what you know and what you can do can do at a given time in your life to improve your life.
I was particularly interested to hear what Wooden had to say about how teachers can help their students succeed.
no written words
no spoken plea
can teach our children
what to be
nor all the books on all the shelves
it’s what the teachers are themselves
For Wooden, true success for teachers boils down to being good role models and letting students see that we have the peace of mind that comes from knowing we are doing the best we are capable of doing to improve the situation at hand. I will definitely keep Wooden’s notion of true success in mind as I deal with the frustrations of having to teach students for whom the education system is not adequately meeting their needs. I need to remind myself that I’m usually (I’m not perfect- yet) doing my best to improve the situation in the classroom for my students. The public education system, on the other hand, is not being the best it can be given what is known and what it could do at this time to improve the situation in schools. The public education system is a long way from achieving true success, but I along with others are going do our best to help it achieve true success. What are some of the things you are thinking of doing to help the education system achieve true success?
photo thanks to photodawg
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Definitely agree with Wooden’s definition of success. I try my best every day to improve the situation of my students. The class itself can improve the school and it branches out to homes and the community and so on. We’re doing important work, even if it feels like the opposite.
Ben@TIC´s last [type] ..Ask The Students- Working With Computers
Hi Elona!
I enjoyed reading your blog on success! Thanks for posting the TED video. I am about to watch it now.
Mirjan
Mirjan Krstovic´s last [type] ..Evoking Spirituality in Science Classrooms
As a special educator I am always trying to have my students reach standards or levels of achievement. Ted Wooden put into prospective student success. I enjoyed his humor, and his experiences with student success. Understanding that if we consistently give our best to them, this will hopefully motivate them to also give their best in the classroom–in life. I really enjoyed reading several of the posts on this site, and agree with it being a top five inspirational blog site.
I love how you show that teaching is about helping kids be successful not just in making the grade but also in life.
In November, Houston is hosting the BigTent Conference, a first-of-its-kind national positive youth development conference bringing together almost every major education voice and think tank in the country – Search Institute, 4H, Boys & Girls Clubs, America’s Promise and more.
The BigTent is a safe environment to learn, grow and make a plan to support kids in the areas you’re writing about and so much more.
I wanted to invite you to join us! http://www.BigTentConference.com. The conference is Nov. 18-20, 2010 at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston.