"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try."
As a perfectionist, I know I disappoint myself frequently because I know that out of my failures, I do have some successes. The problem, for me, with failure is that it affects me negatively and causes stress on myself. My husband gets so frustrated with me because I often don't see myself the way coworkers see me. I administered the 8th grade final exam last Friday and the results were not nearly what I anticipated them to be. I was nearly to the point of tears and doubting my teaching career by the time I went home. After I regrouped myself, I looked at how my 7th graders did on their final exam and realized that they did pretty well. I decided at that point that my teaching can't be the problem. Perhaps, I didn't teach exactly what I should have, the right points, or the test could even not have been clear. I spent several hours over the weekend reconsidering my lesson plans, and I rewrote most of a 15 day unit during that time. When I returned to school, I apologized to my students and posed the changes I plan to make for my next term to them. I even had a few raise their hands to ask if they could come back to my class because the changes seemed so exciting to them. Yes, I was very disappointed in my failure because I truly feel like I have found my calling and it hurt badly. If I didn't have the failure, I wouldn't have tried to improve; therefore, I would be missing out on a great teaching opportunity (improvement), and my students would be missing out on a great learning opportunity. This quote was just what I needed to see today because it is so relevant to my life and helps ease some of my feelings of inadequacy.
2 comments:
Casey I am right there with you in how you are feeling! I care so much and am so passionate about what I am doing that I think I take things too personally. I have to remember these are teenagers we are working with and I shouldn't take it personally if they are behaving or reacting the way that I think they should. This is a learning process for both of us.
I can relate to what you are saying about evaluating yourself and wondering did you teach all of the valuable points to students. It is very hard to gauge how well you are teaching based on student scores. I have noticed that students can be spoon fed and still not be able to give us the answer when we want it, but rather when we least expect it they show us what we have taught them. We must continue to do our best even when the students seem to disappoint us and cause us to feel like we have disappointed ourselves.
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