Help Students Remember What Success Feels Like

What's going on everybody, I hope this finds you striving and thriving and doing absolutely amazing. You ever open up a book, and you're looking through it, and something just jumps right off the page at you. And it makes you pause. And it makes you think. My name is Brian Martin. I'm a second grade teacher and host of the teaching champions podcast. And the other day, I opened up the book, dear teachers, by Dr. Brad Johnson, and Hal Bowman. And this is definitely a solid read. And I opened to a chapter and the title of this chapter, it just resonated with me. It said, why would a kid want to be successful? If he doesn't remember what success feels like? And how true is that? And let me just say that one more time again, why would a kid want to be successful? If he doesn't remember what success feels like? And this is something that all of us, we need to take a little time right now and pause. And really think about it because we're deep into the middle part of the year allows schools they've hit that 100 day mark, or others are right there. So we've been at it with our students for a while. So let me ask you this. When was the last time your students have felt successful? Right off the bat, we could point to many instances where we have students who have shined, but let's pull away some layers. How about those students who are a little quieter, that don't demand a lot of attention? When was the last time that you can recall that they felt successful? How about the one two academics don't come very naturally to them. And they look around, and they see all their peers, making these great gains. When was the last time they felt successful. And now we're about the ones who may get a lot of our attention. But they get it in a way that might not be the most positive? When was the last time that they felt successful? And these are questions that each and every single one of us need to ask ourselves. These are questions that I need to have an honest conversation with myself about. And if we think about ourselves, when we learn new things, it can be difficult, it can be uncomfortable at first. And if we're not seeing any progress, we lose so much motivation right away. So take a little time this week. Be intentional. Make it a point to share a moment with each of your students and celebrate their learning. Make what they've learned, visible to them, point out the progress that they've made. It's easy for us to get caught up where we're always looking ahead, where we're always seeing what's next that we have to do that we forget to take that time and look back and truly see how far we've come. And that's a lifelong skill that our students need to practice. And they need to know about taking that time to celebrate and appreciate the small wins. Because it's through those small wins, that big wins happen. It's recognizing that little by little, a little becomes a lot. And by taking that time to reflect on all the gains that all of your students have made, because they've all made gains. And by taking that time to recognize and celebrate the small wins. We're creating more resilient students. We're creating students that are more motivated as well. As Dr. Johnson and Hal Bowman said why would a kid want to be successful? If he doesn't remember what success feels like? Take time in remind your students of what success feels like this week. We've been blessed with another sunrise. Have an awesome day everybody