It Does Glitter!

“Anyone can find the dirt in someone.  Be the one that finds the gold.  Proverbs 11:27

Many times, when we begin a new project, before we celebrate the successes, we often spend time condemning ourselves for the failures that happened along the way.  Very seldom we take the opportunity to look at the areas of our lives that are right on track.  We spend so much time dwelling on those aspects of our journey that we’d like to redo, rework, rewrite, or remove.  Although this is something that we struggle with as adults, our students are the exact opposite. 

Kids tend to have instinctive confidence in their abilities to do anything.  That confidence is intuitive, and somewhere along the way that confidence turns into doubt.  I’m unsure if that doubt comes from repeated failure or not enough positive reinforcement for the need to continue trying, but it does exist.  Not only does it exist, but it emerges at a young age.  I am often saddened to see the lack of confidence in our students because it means they don’t realize that failures teach you more about life than any success does.  When students fail at a task and have a teacher in their corner, repeatedly encouraging them to continue trying until they succeed, their confidence is encouraged.  We reinforce the idea that failure is a part of success. It is so easy to find the bad in situations, but if you look for it, you can also uncover glimmers of hope.  As teachers, our job is to find the gold; it exists!