Ch. 1: The Measure of Our Success

This chapter kind of hit home for me, as I grew up in a small town with a good number of low-income families, including my own, and several of my fellow classmates were very similar to Derek, the first student that was featured in this chapter. Students like Derek and Collin are some of the biggest reasons why I want to be a teacher. I want to help these types of students find the potential in themselves and guide them to success. If NCLB will not help students in ways other than academics, then I want to take it upon myself to help them in any way possible. My biology teacher in High School always kept snacks and breakfast bars in her classrooms, and when she heard about students that didn’t get breakfast in the morning, she would give them something to eat so that her lecture wouldn’t be drowned out by the growling of a student’s stomach. I plan to do this in my own classrooms. I also want to be sure that I emphasize in my classroom the importance of improvement, unlike the teacher from Derek’s story, who was made by NCLB to focus on what score Derek received. I really like the quote by Albert Einstein which states that “Everybody is a genius. But, if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I believe that this quote perfectly describes both the situation with Derek and the situation with Collin, as they are both put into a remedial class because they didn’t get the minimum required score on a standardized test or because they were uninterested in a particular subject, despite the other factors which would show just how competent they actually are. It is like asking a fish to climb a tree and then calling it stupid when it can’t do it. Derek improved a LOT on the standardized test, but since he wasn’t able to get the right score, he was marked as needing a remedial course, which therefore solidified his self-opinion that he was unable to do it and that he wasn’t adequate enough. Collin was very skilled in expository writing when it was something that he felt was important, however when he was asked to write an essay about something he didn’t know and cared very little for, it was like asking that fish to climb a tree, rather than letting him swim. It is my goal as a teacher to make sure that I take care of the other needs of my students outside of just academics, and to also make sure that I get to know the true strengths and weaknesses of my students, and not just what their test scores tell me.