Daily Blog Challenge Day 173/365
One of my struggles (one of many) as a teacher is helping my students realize that blaming their talent or lack there of is the easy way out. Talent plays a role in the success of people, but hard work plays an even bigger role. As a coach, I will take the hard worker over the most talented everyday.
Things may not come easy and there will always be others who are more talented, but these are no excuses for not giving full effort and working hard. I was never the best athlete in my school or the best musician, but I was able to find success by working very hard. We see the great athletes and musicians on TV, but we rarely hear about all the work they put in to get great.
How do we teach our students this? Thanks you for reading.
Great question (again!). I am like you....I was not the best musician in my class. I was not the smartest in my class (though I did get good grades). I worked hard and just tried my best. I see the excuses that you are referring to all the time:
ReplyDelete"I'm just not any good at this!"
I can't tell you how many times I've told my kids that reading music is not a secret code. There is no music fairy that will fly around and reveal the secret code to only the most talented kids. NO. It's a pattern. If you pay attention and work hard, you too can figure out all the names of the notes! Then when we get out the xylophones, same thing....it's a pattern. It just requires hard work. Unless you're Mozart, Saint-Saens or some other prodigy, you're not going to climb onto the piano bench at age 3 and play a concerto!
Kids these days (yikes, I sounds like my parents!) want a quick fix. Most want to be good at something right away. (Maybe we did when we were kids too....who knows. I'm too old to remember!) I sometimes see it in my 8.5 year old. Whether it's our singing voice, recorder, xylophone, piano, drums, softball, soccer, math, reading....it's easier if we're just perfect right away! Hard work is...well, hard! :)
I think we have to just keep at it, and keep offering bigger challenges to those who are naturals so that they aren't getting by on just their talent either. If the "struggling" kids see that everything comes easily to the talented ones and never see them "working hard," then they are tempted to say talent is the only thing that works.