Real Growth....Real Happiness....Tremendous Success

The growth I mentioned in my last post had very little to do with basic and factual scientific knowledge. It has led to an exciting ability for 10 and 11 year-olds to creatively use and apply this knowledge in demonstrations and experiments OUTSIDE of the classroom.

And if they can learn to do it in school, they're much more likely to learn how to do it in life.

Even students who were supposed to achieve very little, if any, grew. One who is SLD, or Severe Learning Disabled, grew by 28%. He isn't supposed to be able to learn very much. From day one I told him to throw out that label of disabled. He may have a severe learning DIFFICULTY, but in no way was he unable to learn......and we would work with that and OVERCOME IT!

On our way to the park last week he said, "Mr. Stuart, someday a boy just like me is going to be holding a comic book in is hands just like I am.......one that is written by me."

His ability to visualize his dreams clearly and specifically is well above average. He doesn't hope, he SEES and FEELS his dream as if it was real! We've used that to work on a comic book together, giving his super heroes and villians super scientific powers......and he has learned science in the process.

More importantly, he has learned how to go from just Dreaming Big, to now DOING BIG!......and it is changing his life!

The student who achieved the lowest growth in the class, 12%, has done something much more profound than show growth when during the year she showed very little...........She has found herself!

In the beginning of the year she felt hopeless, and would use her intelligence to come up with really good lies to cover her lack of effort and production.

I would tell her that she was giving all her power away by blaming anything and everyone for her failures....everyone but herself. She was losing, and would continue to lose, as long as she continued.

And one day she would lose herself, wondering how life got away from her, why all these bad things happened in her life, and she would feel even more hopeless than she does now.

As she was made to look in the mirror of who she was deciding to be, her hopelessness turned to hate. I tried many different things with her, but the one that worked was looking past the hate and into hope.

Her very frustrated mother had scheduled a parent-teacher conference on a Friday afternoon. By law it only has to last 15 minutes, and by God, I told myself I had too much to do if I was going to get any sleep that night and that's all I was going to give............it lasted 1 1/2 hours......but it did show this girl how much two people believed in her and were willing to work together to get on the same page FOR HER

The next time she gave me excuses instead of results, I reminded her of this meeting, and told her she was better than this. I told her it was rare to find someone who could see you for everything you could be, instead of seeing and judging you for what you are.

Instead of going from hopelessness to happiness, her eyes turned to hate. This went on for about two months, with her hating my guts. Even though I focus not on what the student thinks of me, but on what she thinks of herself, I was failing to reach her.

If you're a great teacher for 99% of your students, that means you are succeeding with 99%, and failing with 1%........EVERY STUDENT is as important as the any of them. So, one day I decided to be more concrete with her by literally looking past the hate and into her heart.

As she was glaring at me I leaned past her face and whispered in her ear, "You're more than what you're living. Forget about me. Forget about mom. What you think and feel matters most. Think and feel GREAT about yourself, like you're capable of ANYTHING. We know you can. And you know we love you........It's time to Be More."

One of the last to finish anything all year, she was the first to finish the next big project, and has become one of the best at taking full responsibility for her own learning. Pictures of her show a child very happy with herself now, even sticking out her tongue and mugging for the camera......She likes who she is, and is a brand new child.

Most of us search for things to bring us happiness........approval, grades, income, possessions...........She has found the secret to success.........what most people struggle to find all their lives........happiness with herself, with who she is.

It is this great inner happiness, this inner empowerment that will bring her the things she most wants in her life.