I wrote this reflection for my Educational Portfolio Final Reflection and thought I would share...
The concepts of success and failure are important ideas in the realm of education. Our society measures teachers by the success of the students they teach. Students are judged by the level of success they achieve on standardized tests. A teacher may fail to make adequate yearly progress if her students fail to achieve on a particular day of testing. My education at Brenau, my experiences in the classroom at schools, and even my relationship with my own children has shown me that perhaps the ideas of success and failure are not as clear cut as we may like to think.
Almost six years ago, I was one semester away from graduating with a Bachelors of Science from Brenau University and I made the choice to leave the comforts of home in order to gain an education, in the classroom of life, in a rural country in Africa. To many, this seemed like failing to succeed at my goal of graduating with a degree, so that I could become an educator. In reality, this life changing experience gave me a greater idea of what real success is. In Africa, I learned that education is a gift and that it comes with responsibilities; the responsibility to use your education for a greater cause than achieving the perfect score on a standardized test. I also learned, that as a teacher, I should see my student’s long term ability to succeed in anything they put their minds to, as the measurement of my success or failure as a teacher.
As I begin the path to my future as an educator, my hope and desire is that I can define success and failure in a completely different way in my classroom. I hope that I can give a measure of success to every student, whether they have mastered every standard or not. I will have succeeded as an educator, if my students can walk out of my classroom with their heads held high knowing that they are smart, unique, special and that they hold the keys to a "successful future" inside of them.
