Child Accomplishments In School Quotes

Our schools are no closer in connecting the education of children to their development as human beings: each child as an individual with a unique contribution to make to the world. Until this is done, our schools will fail to help children become active learners, connected to their society, and empowered to accomplish things within it.

Later, I admired her: I admired how rapidly, how fluidly, she was adjusting to the fact that the child she thought she would have was not the child she did have. I admired how she knew, well before I did, that the point of a child is not what you hope he will accomplish in our name but the pleasure that he will bring you, whatever form it comes in, even if it is a form that is barely recognizable as pleasure at all - and, more important, the pleasure you will be privileged to bring him. For the rest of Jacob's life, I lagged one step behind Liesl: I kept dreaming he would get better, that he would return to what he had been; she, however, thought only about the life he could have given the current realities of his situation. Maybe he could go to a special school. Okay, he couldn't go to a school at all, but maybe he could be in a playgroup. Okay, he wouldn't be able to be in a playgroup, but maybe he would be able to live a long life anyway. Okay, he wouldn't live a long life, but maybe he could live a short happy life. Okay, he couldn't live a short happy life, but maybe he could live a short life with dignity: we could give him that, and she would hope for nothing else for him.

Having neurons wire together can be a good thing. A positive experience with a math teacher can lead to neural connections that link math with pleasure, accomplishment, and feeling good about yourself as a student. But the opposite is equally true. Negative experiences with a harsh instructor or a timed test and the anxiety that accompanies it can form connections in the brain that create a serious obstacle to the enjoyment not only of math and numbers, but exams and even school in general.

As I look back on my own life, I recognize that some of the greatest gifts I received from my parents stemmed not from what they did for me—but rather from what they didn’t do for me. One such example: my mother never mended my clothes. I remember going to her when I was in the early grades of elementary school, with holes in both socks of my favorite pair. My mom had just had her sixth child and was deeply involved in our church activities. She was very, very busy. Our family had no extra money anywhere, so buying new socks was just out of the question. So she told me to go string thread through a needle, and to come back when I had done it. That accomplished—it took me about ten minutes, whereas I’m sure she could have done it in ten seconds—she took one of the socks and showed me how to run the needle in and out around the periphery of the hole, rather than back and forth across the hole, and then simply to draw the hole closed. This took her about thirty seconds. Finally, she showed me how to cut and knot the thread. She then handed me the second sock, and went on her way. A year or so later—I probably was in third grade—I fell down on the playground at school and ripped my Levi’s. This was serious, because I had the standard family ration of two pairs of school trousers. So I took them to my mom and asked if she could repair them. She showed me how to set up and operate her sewing machine, including switching it to a zigzag stitch; gave me an idea or two about how she might try to repair it if it were she who was going to do the repair, and then went on her way. I sat there clueless at first, but eventually figured it out. Although in retrospect these were very simple things, they represent a defining point in my life. They helped me to learn that I should solve my own problems whenever possible; they gave me the confidence that I could solve my own problems; and they helped me experience pride in that achievement. It’s funny, but every time I put those socks on until they were threadbare, I looked at that repair in the toe and thought, “I did that.” I have no memory now of what the repair to the knee of those Levi’s looked like, but I’m sure it wasn’t pretty. When I looked at it, however, it didn’t occur to me that I might not have done a perfect mending job. I only felt pride that I had done it. As for my mom, I have wondered what

Ethan’s parents constantly told him how brainy he was. “You’re so smart! You can do anything, Ethan. We are so proud of you, they would say every time he sailed through a math test. Or a spelling test. Or any test. With the best of intentions, they consistently tethered Ethan’s accomplishment to some innate characteristic of his intellectual prowess. Researchers call this “appealing to fixed mindsets.” The parents had no idea that this form of praise was toxic. 　　Little Ethan quickly learned that any academic achievement that required no effort was the behavior that defined his gift. When he hit junior high school, he ran into subjects that did require effort. He could no longer sail through, and, for the first time, he started making mistakes. But he did not see these errors as opportunities for improvement. After all, he was smart because he could mysteriously grasp things quickly. And if he could no longer grasp things quickly, what did that imply? That he was no longer smart. Since he didn’t know the ingredients making him successful, he didn’t know what to do when he failed. You don’t have to hit that brick wall very often before you get discouraged, then depressed. Quite simply, Ethan quit trying. His grades collapsed. What happens when you say, ‘You’re so smart’ 　　Research shows that Ethan’s unfortunate story is typical of kids regularly praised for some fixed characteristic. If you praise your child this way, three things are statistically likely to happen: 　　First, your child will begin to perceive mistakes as failures. Because you told her that success was due to some static ability over which she had no control, she will start to think of failure (such as a bad grade) as a static thing, too—now perceived as a lack of ability. Successes are thought of as gifts rather than the governable product of effort. 　　Second, perhaps as a reaction to the first, she will become more concerned with looking smart than with actually learning something. (Though Ethan was intelligent, he was more preoccupied with breezing through and appearing smart to the people who mattered to him. He developed little regard for learning.) 　　Third, she will be less willing to confront the reasons behind any deficiencies, less willing to make an effort. Such kids have a difficult time admitting errors. There is simply too much at stake for failure. 　　  　　What to say instead: ‘You really worked hard’ 　　What should Ethan’s parents have done? Research shows a simple solution. Rather than praising him for being smart, they should have praised him for working hard. On the successful completion of a test, they should not have said,“I’m so proud of you. You’re so smart. They should have said, “I’m so proud of you. You must have really studied hard”. This appeals to controllable effort rather than to unchangeable talent. It’s called “growth mindset” praise.

community. As a child, I associated accomplishments in school with femininity. Manliness meant strength, courage, a willingness to fight, and, later, success with girls. Boys who got good grades were “sissies” or “faggots.” I don’t know where I got this feeling. Certainly not from Mamaw, who demanded good grades, nor from Papaw.

I love my kids, and I’m so proud of them for everything that they have accomplished. My oldest child, Elon, is making electric cars to save the environment and launching rockets. My middle child, Kimbal, opened farm-to-table restaurants and is teaching children across the country to build fruit and vegetable gardens in underserved schools. My youngest child, Tosca, runs her own entertainment company, producing and directing romance films from bestselling novels. They all have different interests.

Tell me this- if you could have a guarantee that your child would be a National Merit Scholar and get into a prestigious college, have good work habits and a successful career, but that your relationship with him would be destroyed in the process, would you do it? Why not? Because you are made to love, that's why. We care about our relationships more than about our accomplishments. That's the way God made us. Then why don't we live that way? Why, come a damp and gloomy day in March, do we yell over a  math lesson or lose our temper over a writing assignment? Why do we see the lessons left to finish and get lost in an anxiety-ridden haze? We forget that we are dealing with a soul, a precious child bearing the Image of God, and all we can see is that there are only a few months left to the school year and we are still only halfway through the math book. When you are performing mommy triage- that is, when you have a crisis moment and have to figure out which fire to put out first- always choose your child. It's just a math lesson. It's only a writing assignment. It's a Latin declension. Nothing more. But your child? He is God's. And the Almighty put him in your charge for relationship. Don't damage that relationship over something so trivial as an algebra problem. And when you do (because you will, and so will I), repent. We like to feed our egos. When our children perform well, we can puff up with satisfaction and pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. But as important as it is to give our children a solid education (and it is important, don't misunderstand me), it is far more important that we love them well.  Our children need to know that the most important thing about them is not whether they finished their science curriculum or score well on the SAT. Their worth is not bound up in a booklist or a test score. Take a moment. Take ten. Look deep into your child's eyes. Listen, even when you're bored. Break out a board game or an old picture book you haven't read in ages. Resting in Him means relaxing into the knowledge that He has put these children in our care to nurture. And nurturing looks different than charging through the checklist all angst-like. Your children are not ordinary kids or ordinary people, because there are no ordinary kids or ordinary people. They are little reflections of the

A school-age child has a huge list of developmental tasks to accomplish. The biggest one is learning the skills that she perceives she will need in adulthood. For some children, these skills are reading, writing, and math. For others, they are learning how to manipulate, con others, steal, or fight. A school-age child must learn from her own mistakes and decide for herself that “I am capable.” She must learn to listen in order to collect information and think logically. She must learn about rules and the consequences of breaking them. She must test her own ideas and values, and see that she can disagree with others and still be loved. School-age children grow in their ability to cooperate during the same years in which they contrast their abilities with those of others. They grapple with the concept of responsibility and strengthen their internal control mechanisms.

I know the tutoring is not permanent. I know I cannot do it long-term. But I like it and am not bad at it. Maybe I can be a full-time teacher somewhere. At a school. Or a small college. When I can ensure them some sort of stability, I will tell them everything, the quitting of the PhD, my next steps. I need more time to figure this out, and once I do, I will tell them everything. Half of me says, By not telling the truth, you only hurt yourself. And the other half says, But by telling the truth now, without a plan of how to proceed, you will hurt them more. What would telling them accomplish? It will only cause strife. Peace of mind? Encouragement? Support? Don't say catharsis. Catharsis. I don't want to get married until I have done more for myself. But also I owe it to them to do more for myself, which is what Eric didn't' understand; he said, You shouldn't owe them anything. We argue over this. The American brings up the individual. The Chinese brings up xiao shun. When I ask Eric if he thinks a child can ever feel entirely independent of her parents, he says, What kind of question is that? But now I don't really know. There is too much already shared. Mother, Father, I think I know what it means to hurt for you.

As Mollie said to Dailey in the 1890s: "I am told that there are five other Mollie Fanchers, who together, make the whole of the one Mollie Fancher, known to the world; who they are and what they are I cannot tell or explain, I can only conjecture." Dailey described five distinct Mollies, each with a different name, each of whom he met (as did Aunt Susan and a family friend, George Sargent). According to Susan Crosby, the first additional personality appeared some three years after the after the nine-year trance, or around 1878. The dominant Mollie, the one who functioned most of the time and was known to everyone as Mollie Fancher, was designated Sunbeam (the names were devised by Sargent, as he met each of the personalities). The four other personalities came out only at night, after eleven, when Mollie would have her usual spasm and trance. The first to appear was always Idol, who shared Sunbeam's memories of childhood and adolescence but had no memory of the horsecar accident. Idol was very jealous of Sunbeam's accomplishments, and would sometimes unravel her embroidery or hide her work. Idol and Sunbeam wrote with different handwriting, and at times penned letters to each other. The next personality Sargent named Rosebud: "It was the sweetest little child's face," he described, "the voice and accent that of a little child." Rosebud said she was seven years old, and had Mollie's memories of early childhood: her first teacher's name, the streets on which she had lived, children's songs. She wrote with a child's handwriting, upper- and lowercase letters mixed. When Dailey questioned Rosebud about her mother, she answered that she was sick and had gone away, and that she did not know when she would be coming back. As to where she lived, she answered "Fulton Street," where the Fanchers had lived before moving to Gates Avenue. Pearl, the fourth personality, was evidently in her late teens. Sargent described her as very spiritual, sweet in expression, cultured and agreeable: "She remembers Professor West [principal of Brooklyn Heights Seminary], and her school days and friends up to about the sixteenth year in the life of Mollie Fancher. She pronounces her words with an accent peculiar to young ladies of about 1865." Ruby, the last Mollie, was vivacious, humorous, bright, witty. "She does everything with a dash," said Sargent. "What mystifies me about 'Ruby,' and distinguishes her from the others, is that she does not, in her conversations with me, go much into the life of Mollie Fancher. She has the air of knowing a good deal more than she tells.

During that time, “Hurry up or we’ll be late” was commonly heard, either yelled from the kitchen or hissed while we scurried into the back row at church. There was too much to do in too little time. Life was a blur. And I thought everyone lived like this. That was until I read about “hurry sickness” in The Life You’ve Always Wanted by John Ortberg. My heart was skewered when I read that one of its symptoms is a diminished capacity to love. My children could have told you I had a problem. Only it wasn’t hurry sickness, it was hurry addiction. God dealt with my addiction to overload and hurry by taking it all away in a cross-country move. He made me go cold turkey as I said good-bye to working at my job, directing the children’s ministry, coleading the women’s ministry, being on the praise team, having my small group, leading Vacation Bible Study each summer, and more. God moved us 2,100 miles away—so far that I couldn’t even sneak back to lead a women’s event. I had no job, no church, and no friends, just lots of time. Since two of the boys were in school and the youngest had just started preschool, I had plenty of time to think and pray. And while there were lots of tears, I also experienced God in a new way. Very quickly, God connected me with Proverbs 31 Ministries. I started to learn that God had a better plan for my life than I did, and that I should look to Him for direction on my daily activities. I also learned that my first line of ministry was inside my home. I wasn’t completely cured of my hurry addiction yet, so I decided I would become the Best Homemaker Ever. And then I picked up a book called No Ordinary Home by Carol Brazo. And right in the beginning of the book I read something that brought about the biggest change in my life: If there were one biblical truth I wish I could give my children and lay hold of in my own deepest parts, it would be this one thing. He created me, He loves me, He will always love me. Nothing I do will change who I am. Being versus doing. The error was finally outlined in bold. I was always worried about what I was doing. . . . God’s only concern was and is what I am being—a child of His, forgiven, justified by the work of His Son, His Heir.[2] You know when you feel like an author has peeked into your living room window and knows exactly who you are? That’s what reading this was like for me. God wired me to be highly productive, but I hadn’t undergirded that with an understanding of my true identity. So in order to feel worthwhile and valued and confident, I was driven to take on more. More accomplishments equaled more worth. But it was never enough.

Depression, sexual troubles, anxiety, loneliness, and guilt are the main problems that drive consumers into the recovery movement. Explaining such adult troubles as being caused by victimization during childhood does not accomplish much. Compare “wounded child” as an explanation to some of the other ways you might explain your problems: “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” or “sexually dysfunctional.” “Wounded child” is a more permanent explanation; “depressive” is less permanent. As we saw in the first section of this book, depression, anxiety, and sexual dysfunction—unlike being a wounded child—are all eminently treatable. “Wounded child” is also more pervasive in its destructive effects: “Toxic” is the colorful word used to describe its pervasiveness. “Depression,” “anxiety,” and “sexually dysfunctional” are all narrower, less damning labels, and this, in fact, is part of the reason why treatment works. So “wounded child” (unless you believe in catharsis cures) leads to more helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity than the alternatives. But it is less personal—your parents did it to you—than “depressive,” “anxiety-prone,” and “sexually dysfunctional.” Impersonal explanations of bad events raise self-esteem more than personal ones. Therefore “wounded child” is better for raising your self-esteem and for lowering your guilt. Self-esteem has become very important to Americans in the last two decades. Our public schools are supposed to nurture the self-esteem of our children, our churches are supposed to minister to the self-esteem of their congregants, and the recovery movement is supposed to restore the self-esteem of victims. Attaining self-esteem, while undeniably important, is a goal that I have reservations about. I think it is an overinflated idea, and my opinion was formed by my work with depressed people. Depressed people, you will recall, have four kinds of problems: behavioral—they are passive, indecisive, and helpless; emotional—they are sad; bodily—their sleeping, eating, and sex are disrupted; cognitive—they think life is hopeless and that they are worthless. Only the second half of this last symptom amounts to low self-esteem. I have come to believe that lack of self-esteem is the least important of these woes. Once a depressed person becomes active and hopeful, self-esteem always improves. Bolstering self-esteem without changing hopelessness or passivity, however, accomplishes nothing. To put it exactly, I believe that low self-esteem is an epiphenomenon, a mere reflection that your commerce with the world is going badly. It has no power in itself. What needs improving is not self-esteem but your commerce with the world. So the one advantage of labeling yourself a victim—raised self-esteem—is minimal, particularly since victimhood raises self-esteem at the cost of greater hopelessness and passivity, and therefore worsens commerce with the world. This is indeed my main worry about the recovery movement. Young Americans right now are in an epidemic of depression. I have speculated on the causes in the last chapter of my book Learned Optimism, and I will not repeat my conjectures here. Young people are easy pickings for anything that makes them feel better—even temporarily. The recovery movement capitalizes on this epidemic. When it works, it raises self-esteem and lowers guilt, but at the expense of our blaming others for our troubles. Never mind the fact that those we blame did not in fact cause our troubles. Never mind the fact that thinking of ourselves as victims induces helplessness, hopelessness, and passivity. Never mind that there are more effective treatments available elsewhere.

Communication between school and home is important not only because you will feel more secure about the environment being provided for your children, but also because you, as parents, can share in your children's developmental milestones despite your not being available to witness them at all times. A daily journal exchange can facilitate this communication. Your child care providers can be asked to document your children's daily accomplishments. They are likely to understand how important this is for you.

Everyone has hidden potential. This book is about how we unlock it. There’s a widely held belief that greatness is mostly born—not made. That leads us to celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But you don’t have to be a wunderkind to accomplish great things.

Those activities of an earlier day, furthermore, provided opportunities for cooperative action toward a common goal and for a sense of accomplishment that was not readily available to a modern technological society. For the 'city-bred child of today' (p. 21), such opportunities were no longer present, and the educational problem then became one of recreating in the school something of the occupations that in former times not only provided a sense of real purpose, but linked intelligence and cooperative action to what the work of the world required.

Though in its beginnings, prayer is so simple that the feeblest child can pray, yet at the same time it is the highest and holiest work that man can accomplish. Prayer is fellowship with the unseen and Most Holy One. The powers of the eternal world have been placed at its disposal.

Let’s think more about the goal of building internal drive in our students, which is part of our fourth goal. You may know that there has been a recent backlash against the practice of rewarding children for every good turn, and for the now-pervasive practice of giving every child a participation trophy. Motivation researchers have long found that offering rewards for a job well done (or just a job done at all) often has the ironic effect of decreasing students’ internal motivation to perform that job (Deci, Koestner & Ryan, 2001). This is similar to what happens to professional athletes when they start making money to play, and they find that the passion and drive for the game that they felt in high school and college begin to melt away. When an individual gets rewarded for an action, that individual starts focusing more on the reward than on the natural pleasure that the action may bring them. Remove the reward, and they are actually less likely to perform the action than they would have been if they’d never been rewarded at all. In contrast, research (Ryan & Deci, 2000) has also found that there are three factors that foster sustained internal drive in us humans: competence (“I can do this”); autonomy (“I have control over what happens here”); and relatedness (“I am connected to people around me”). Plan A is not a particularly good recipe for fostering these factors, especially when Plan A comes in the form of sticker charts, points, and other systems of rewards and consequences that attempt to manipulate a student’s behavior through mechanisms of power and control—the opposite of building a sense of autonomy. Plan C doesn’t do a good job of this either, because while reducing expectations has advantages such as helping avoid challenging behavior, it does not leave the student with a sense of accomplishment and thus competence. We think you will come to find that Plan B provides a great recipe to foster internal drive, by helping students learn the skills (competence) to solve problems independently (autonomy) through an empathic interpersonal process (relatedness).

the psychologist turned to Gillian’s mother and said, “You know, Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn’t sick. She’s a dancer. Take her to a dance school.” I asked Gillian what happened then. She said her mother did exactly what the psychologist suggested. “I can’t tell you how wonderful it was,” she told me. “I walked into this room, and it was full of people like me. People who couldn’t sit still. People who had to move to think.” She started going to the dance school every week, and she practiced at home every day. Eventually, she auditioned for the Royal Ballet School in London, and they accepted her. She went on to join the Royal Ballet Company itself, becoming a soloist and performing all over the world. When that part of her career ended, she formed her own musical theater company and produced a series of highly successful shows in London and New York. Eventually, she met Andrew Lloyd Webber and created with him some of the most successful musical theater productions in history, including Cats and The Phantom of the Opera. Little Gillian, the girl with the high-risk future, became known to the world as Gillian Lynne, one of the most accomplished choreographers of our time, someone who has brought pleasure to millions and earned millions of dollars. This happened because someone looked deep into her eyes—someone who had seen children like her before and knew how to read the signs. Someone else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down. But Gillian wasn’t a problem child. She didn’t need to go away to a special school. She just needed to be who she really was.