![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/files\/2017\/10\/Bucket-with-holes.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nNew information was not easily attained\u2026. or retained for that matter\u2026 still isn\u2019t for me! I had to work long and hard, and I\u2019m fairly confident that if I were to have a psych-ed assessment today, my IEP would be long and hard too. So it goes without saying that school was not my favourite place. I did a victory lap of Grade 13 and managed to limp through three years of university and secure a full time job at a bank. My teachers had done a good job, they had filled my cup (not the Twitter fountain cup) a cup that would allow me to be \u2018successful\u2019 and get a good job. That was the goal of my educational journey it seemed.<\/p>\n
The thing is, that cup had a hole. I couldn\u2019t rely on my math skills, so I wrote excel spreadsheets to do the forward projections, taxable benefits and amortizations schedules I needed. I couldn\u2019t rely on my writing, editing and revising skills so I looked to technology and my peers to help me with that. I couldn\u2019t rely on my memory so I developed my organization skills so that I could retrieve information at my fingertips. I didn\u2019t have a lot of confidence, so I studied, worked hard, honed my communication skills and never let anyone see me sweat. I compensated a lot. And, nobody knew that \u201cdumb\u201d little girl who couldn\u2019t read or tell time in Grade 3, couldn\u2019t name the provinces and territories of Canada, and failed calculus. I had compensated enough and figured out how to \u201cmake it\u201d. I had fulfilled the education system\u2019s goal \u2013 to get a good job.<\/p>\n
I actually surpassed expectations. I had a FANTASTIC job. I climbed the corporate ladder and broke through the glass ceiling. I was living in Toronto, working only with the executive of the bank, and making a lot of money in my early twenties. I got married to a teacher, and had two beautiful daughters and enrolled our eldest in a great Catholic school in our neighbourhood. That was when things started to change for me.<\/p>\n I worried that our girls would have the same struggles as I had in school. I worked with our eldest trying to ensure that she would be a great reader and mathematician. I told her not to look at the pictures in the book, but to sound out the words. I drilled her with math facts. I was trying to be that perfect mom. Little did I know that what I was doing and the advice I was giving were mistakes. On a side note, I firmly believe that all \u2018soon to be parents\u2019 should go to teachers college. But I digress. Yes, things started to change. I wanted to know more about why I struggled and how to help my daughters be better versions of me. I didn\u2019t want them to have to compensate like I did. I wanted them to have all of those skills that made me successful, not by accident but by design. I believed in this so much that I wanted this for all children.<\/p>\n So off to teacher\u2019s college I went. I left the money behind and followed my heart. I certainly didn\u2019t have a great deal of knowledge to fill up my students\u2019 cups\u2026 what was I thinking becoming a teacher? Had I just ruined my life? Had I just endangered the success of all my future students? What had I done?<\/p>\n Well it has turned out that making the decision to leave the bank and work with children has been the best decision I ever made. I am confident that it is not the knowledge that I share with my students that will allow them to be successful and secure great jobs, but all of the other skills that I was forced to learn along my educational journey. When they are not understanding the math concept we are working on, I get it, not because of my knowledge, but because I\u2019ve lived the struggle and found a way to survive it and thrive.<\/p>\n There are lots of terms out there for what I developed by accident; grit<\/a>, resilience<\/a>, patience<\/a>, soft skills, communication, collaboration, growth mindset<\/a>. The list is quite extensive and who would have thought that these are the most important parts of my job today, far more important than filling up a cup with knowledge. The knowledge is already there, thank you Google, Twitter, YouTube etc. (Click on the links above to access some of the resources I have been using in my classroom)<\/p>\n The thing is, that banking job won\u2019t be there for the little ones that I am teaching today. When they complete school they will be entering jobs that haven\u2019t even been thought of today<\/a>. So how do I help to prepare them for today and for a job that hasn\u2019t even been conceived of yet? I believe the answer is not in transferring my knowledge but in helping them develop all of those skills that I learned by accident.<\/p>\n It is not really how full that cup is, or whether it has holes in it or not. The important part is in getting a drink. How will you quench your students\u2019 thirst? Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was growing up, the education system was based on the passing of knowledge from one being to another. The teacher\u2019s role was to fill students\u2019 cups up with information so that they could get a good job. I think I had a hole in my cup. New information was not easily attained\u2026. or … Continue reading “Making it with an Empty Cup”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":216,"featured_media":48,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classroom-reflections","tag-grit","tag-growthmindset","tag-resilience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/216"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions\/53"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/lisamitchell\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n