All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
I was conversing with a very experienced Chinese tutor just over the weekend, and she said something very profound, and so very true.
There is a whole myriad of reasons why children are not doing as well (as they want to, or as we want them to), but one reason why they may not be achieving the kind of success we parents and teachers feel they are capable of, is this -- they are not 'hungry enough' to want to taste success.
Our children must want to succeed. To do that they must see the connection between what they are doing now, with what they hope to do in the future.
As parents and teachers, we 'think' for our children and our students by giving them reasons to study and excel. However, we can only go so far. They must want to excel themselves. Only then will they go the distance.
It might be premature to talk about the distant future when the children cannot project their imagination that far into the future (e.g I want to work in animation at Lucas Films, or I want to earn lots of money).
Studying hard now must make sense to the learners themselves. Studying hard now provides the 'HOW' to get to our eventual destination. For now, studying hard first gets us better grades, which brings us to the Class/School/Stream of our choice. All these translate into stepping stones which lead us to our dreams.
And as Walt Disney (who lived his dream and made billions) put it, all our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
In true Singaporean fashion, we say, "You hungry enough or not??"
There is a whole myriad of reasons why children are not doing as well (as they want to, or as we want them to), but one reason why they may not be achieving the kind of success we parents and teachers feel they are capable of, is this -- they are not 'hungry enough' to want to taste success.
Our children must want to succeed. To do that they must see the connection between what they are doing now, with what they hope to do in the future.
As parents and teachers, we 'think' for our children and our students by giving them reasons to study and excel. However, we can only go so far. They must want to excel themselves. Only then will they go the distance.
It might be premature to talk about the distant future when the children cannot project their imagination that far into the future (e.g I want to work in animation at Lucas Films, or I want to earn lots of money).
Studying hard now must make sense to the learners themselves. Studying hard now provides the 'HOW' to get to our eventual destination. For now, studying hard first gets us better grades, which brings us to the Class/School/Stream of our choice. All these translate into stepping stones which lead us to our dreams.
And as Walt Disney (who lived his dream and made billions) put it, all our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.
In true Singaporean fashion, we say, "You hungry enough or not??"
