No One is a Failure

1 class, 40 students, Normal Tech Stream. How am I going to help them all? This is a question that I ask myself as I trodded to my classroom on my very first day of school.

The answer to that question became tougher as I saw their first math test result. Only 1 out of 5 pass a simple test. You cannot believe the kind of answers they gave in the test. The only thing I could ask myself is, 'What have I taught in the past 3 week?' The time seems to stop when things are not looking up. You get discouraged, disappoinment creeps in and you hear voices that taunt you, 'you are not in the right job!' 'time to ship out'

I didnt quit, I pressed in. My students needs hope and I am the one who can give them this hope and I will. Things did get better when I try again, apart from making the lesson interesting, I believe the real thing that motivates them is that, 'cher believes in us' , 'we cannot fail', 'hey! this is easy!' 'i can do this'.

Your students can feel it when you start to believe in them. In fact, they will start to achieve once they feel their teacher believes in them. This is what I believe teaching should be. Teachers that choose to believe that No One is A Failure!

A story was told in the US that a teacher was given a new class and was told that they were a gifted class. And so she taught them in ways that only gifed students should. The final term exams came and nearly all of them did what gifted student should achieve: Excellent results. When the news came to the school administration, they couldnt believe it and called the teacher in. She could not believe when she got the news that these students were just ordinary students and not gifted!

Expectation makes a difference... make a difference this new school semester.

Posted by Daryl Koh (KOPI-C Coordinator)