What Counts?
As a footwork teacher I realise that not all children are as coordinated or gifted as each other - the reasons are varied, it could be a physical thing, a social thing or a confidence thing. But, from an early age you can see who are really going to make something of themselves because there seems an innate sense of achievement within them.
In tennis I think of what Steffi Graf and Rafael Nadal must have been like as students….They don’t LACK - they’d rather try than lie! If you hit a ball anywhere on the court they would bust there guts to get to there….this is what I look for ….(you know, you can’t send a duck to eagle school!)
Great achievers are great students, they are always a pleasure to teach…..they make the lesson easy and are a joy to teach. If they fall over they don’t look around for sympathy they brush themselves off and get up…they don’t stay down.
If I could teach only one thing to every child in the world it would be this-
“Failure is not the worst thing in the world. The very worst is not to try”
There is such a strong habit by some children to quit when overcome by temporary defeat or when something pushes their boundaries. I want to see students who have stickability not quitability….. that is realy all I can ever ask! It is not about talent…it really is all about attitude!
Lack of effort = Failure
If I could teach the perfect maths lesson I would teach that the only angle to approach life is the TRYangle approach, because teaching children to count is important but not as important as What what counts!
Quote: “To try and fail is at least to learn. To fail to try is to suffer the inestimable loss of what might have been”.
The greatest curse in life is to catch the disease of lazy-itiss!