Teaching Tip #103

Teacherscribe's Teaching Tip #103

I think we can’t remind our students of this enough.  When I was listening to Ken Eastman he talked about Kevin Garnett.  I am paraphrasing here, but his quote goes like - success under the bright lights and thousands of people is only possible after countless hours of practice under dim lights alone on the court.  Eastman talked about how Garnett practiced and lifted weights and conditioned every single day, even as a future hall of famer.  He never rested on his laurels or said, “Good enough.”   Garnett worked on his shot every single day.

I think these needs to be ingrained in our kids.

I work on my teaching ever single day.  It’s usually in the back of my mind as I’m driving to work, mowing the lawn, laying down in bed, or all the times I’m researching or writing about teaching (as I am now).  We have to show this to our students.  Furthermore, we have to call out the times our students worked hard and took the stairs (to connect it to the image above) and it paid off.

Too often students like to take pride in doing something at the last second or procrastinating and then getting it done.  We have to put less focus on that and praise the effort and hard work of our students, especially when it pays off.