Wallblog

I guess I would ask if they did their best? I know this probably will not go over well in the coaching ranks, but I'm not sure how imporant it is for them to win. (I know, Coach Lombardi is stirring in his grave . . .). If they truly did their best, can we really ask any more of them? And should they feel bad if they gave their best, yet still lost? I have a real concern over the "#1 mentality" we seem to have today - that only being the winner is worthwhile. So I think that's a conversation I might try to have with them (of course, easy for me to say since you would actually be having the conversation with them).

As far as the comparison to the classroom goes, I think that's an excellent question. My gut reaction is "Yeah, they should always give their best." But I'm not sure that's realistic. I know that my "best" changes from day to day (sometimes minute to minute), so that's a really hard quality to quantify. But I think ideally students would be as upset about not doing their best in the classroom as they are about "losing" in the sports arena. But again, just like the concept of "winning," I don't think they should be upset over the grade. If they did their best, who cares about the grade? If they didn't do their best, who cares about the grade?

Finally, what would our school (your classroom) look like if we didn't let them "get by without doing their best"?
 

I like what both of you said here. I try to always look at success and failure as relative ideas. For example, I had a student last semester who earned approximately 40% on her first exam of the semester. She really struggles in school, and yet she worked extremely hard on her skills and came in during office hours for lots of extra help. On the second exam she earned about 65% percent! She was extremely happy, as was I, because she improved so much relative to her previous performance. I got frustrated at Parent-Teacher Conferences because all her mom could focus on was the fact that she had earned an F and a D on a test. I tried to help her see that going from 40% to 65% was huge, but she didn't seem to buy into what I was saying. Regardless, the student continued to improve throughout the semester, and she earned a B or B- on another exam later in the semester. I have never seen a kid so happy!!! She actually danced - I am not kidding! - back to her desk after I handed that test back to her. Her best friend was totally excited for her, and gave her a huge hug. It struck me how important that performance was for that student. Meanwhile I had other students in the class who were unhappy because they earned B+s on the exam. On the one hand that frustrates me a bit because a B is a good grade, but on the other hand I do like the fact that they want to excel. (I just hope that they think that learning - not earning an A - is what it means to excel.) More thoughts on this on my blog.
 

"Lose the game not the lesson."

-Greg Trotter

I think that you guys are right. We need to find a way to encourage the students to do their best work and take pride in what they do. The "how" is the question.
 

This is an interesting issue, since we definitely have students here at AHS who don't care whether they do well academically or not, while we also have students who care how they do, but only in terms of the grade. I know that we also have some students who care about learning and not the grade - how do we get the others to be more like them?