By: Chara Benson, Role Model Moms
Last week, one of my students (who only needs to pass math but is struggling with attendance) showed up to class on a day that she didn’t have to in order to catch up. She ended up helping me tutor shome of the other girls on the matieral she already knew. When this happened, I saw the success that this girl had just shown me and I told her how proud I was of her dedication.
As I have been teaching the Role Model Moms program this year, I have, at times, been discouraged with how difficult the GED is for some of these women to achieve. The matieral is not easy for some who have not had much education. However, I realize my discouragement is not valid because I have learned that success is not only when they larn or pass the school material. A student’s measure of success is absolutely relevant to their individual journey in this life and not about any standardized measure.
What do I mean by this?
With “at risk” students, like many of the students in my class, the benefits come when that student hears an encourage, empowering voice telling them “You can do this! Wow! You just did this!” That voice gets internalized in a student who has a history of other voices telling them, “Just give up. What are you ever going to amount to? Why do you bother?” The new voice is carried with them for the many, many hours of their life when they are not at school. When they return back to the torture of school and they are asked to try to answer a few questions, they start to heave the new voice and think, “well, I may as well try…”
So when students walk through the door and say, “Good Morning,” to me, that’s success. They didn’t stay in bed with their sheets over their heads wallowing in all the dreams they never got to realize. They didn’t listen to everyone around them telling them to give up on school, give up on themselves, or give up on trying to do something different.
Romans 12:12 tells us, Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” The success comes from a God who loves us even if we do nothing, but is delighted when we can’t help but do something.