His A levels exams are coming up soon and I have facilitate him with the best education I can provide. I enrolled him to tuition because I know that if my son gets a good grade in high school he will be admitted to a reputable university later on. Maybe Harvard, Yale, or MIT, any of those Ivy league universities and that will definitely secure him of a good job right?”
students to succeed. This success is obtained if they manage to reach the learning objectives which means that they have achieved passing grades and live up to the expectation of the school’s curriculum. If a student succeeds it means I succeed as a teacher and if they fail, I fail too. Academic achievement is a shared responsibility that we teachers feel. We feel pride when we see that this student who struggled at first but at the end recieved an A. It kind of makes our jobs worth it and validates why we chose to teach. The success is not just theirs, but ours too.”
teenager and is doing my best at it. But you know, sometimes it’s really hard. The tests and everything. Drama, making friends, plus getting good grades, seems like an impossible array of tasks to complete perfectly. I want to succeed in school and apparently it means getting good grades so I am going to work hard to do it so that I can get a good future and make my parents happy.”
Above are the three common expectations of the three roles. Parents are expected to have children who are successful at school and if they succeed there, they will more likely to succeed in real life. Education is one of the means to climb up the social ladder if the higher education you get, the more you are worth in the society. Of course parents, you want the best for your children and that is great! You encourage your children to study hard and be the best in class so they will enroll in a great university and get reputable jobs.
Teachers, you are a gardener and your students are seedlings that you nurture until they grow into beautiful plants. You keep the plants free from weeds, provide water and give access to sunlight and pretty soon those small seedlings turn into flourishing plants. You do everything that you can to ensure that the seeds you plant today will blossom tomorrow. Your job is to make sure the student grows and this is measured by grades so your measure for success is their grades.
Unfortunately in reality it is not that easy to succeed. Academic studies might seem like it is the most important thing but they are not. Although we cannot deny their importance but there is something more crucial: self-esteem. Why? Hasn’t it been proven that if you get good scores you will get into good schools and then you will get into good jobs? All successful people are smart and excellent in their studies so why am I proposing such a ridiculous idea?
An educator once told me that a parent came up to him and asked,
“Why aren’t you teaching my children the elements in the periodic table? Back in my school days we memorised all of it and now my child cannot even name a row!”
He simply replied
“Sir, can you tell me all of the elements in the periodic table now?”
The parent was flabbergasted because, of course, he could not recall such information as it was many many years ago. That conversation shows that at school the things that you learn might not matter later when you are older. What use is the knowledge of chemical bonding if you are going to be a poet later on. The same goes for the parent, what use is the periodic table at his age? I can predict that it does not really matter. So what actually matters? It is the process of how the students learn that sticks until they grow up.
Imagine you are a student, who always manages to be in the top 2% of your school, or even your country but you do this because your parents constantly remind you to study. In high school, your identity was the “smartest student” and you lived up to that title. Years later, you got into an ivy league university but when you get there you are more likely to develop an inferiority complex which means that you must always be number one but in reality there is always someone better than you.
When you realise that you are not the best student like you always have been back at high school makes you lose your identity and now what you will do is to be “yourself” again by getting good grades as before by any means necessary if it means cheating as you are justified by the results.
That is studying, not learning. We cannot survive the twenty first century with just merely studying. Students must be equipped with the proper mental strength to be able to survive the competition and truly be successful. This is achieved by having a good self-esteem.
Defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as confidence in one's own worth or abilities. Self-esteem is the first step for success whether it is in academics, work, love life, or anything else. If you have a good foundation of self-esteem that is already one step closer to your goal.
Self-esteem, according to Dr. Josephine Kim, a professor in Harvard Graduate School of Education is the most important thing because when you have faith in yourself, you are confident and you believe in yourself no matter what. You can do anything. Become anyone. On the other hand, if you have low self-esteem it will block you from achieving your potential. Automatically you withdraw yourself from others because you think you are just not good enough. When that withdrawal begins you block yourself from the opportunities and chances that you could have taken. And then you end up with nothing, because you feel like you are nothing.
Now the first step for improvement is admitting your mistakes, so the following is a self esteem “checklist” by Dr. Josephine Kim, that can give an idea whether you have low self esteem or not
Self Esteem Checklist 1
Take a moment to reflect on how you value yourself.