by Jake Hollingsworth // Seoul, South Korea // www.JakeHollingsworth.net
Success is overrated.
There, I said it. And what’s more, this isn’t a silly, freshman attempt at shock-value. I really mean it. Well, success isn’t exactly overrated, but…well… hmmm… OK, lest I become known as the village idiot of the blogosphere, allow me to explain myself.
Let’s back up just a bit. I first said here that success isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And indeed it is not. At least not the popular definition of success. According to dictionary.com, success is…
1. the favorable or prosperous termination of attempts or endeavors; the accomplishment of one’s goals.
2. the attainment of wealth, position, honors, or the like.
By definition, success is a noun. It is an inanimate object. It doesn’t move. It doesn’t grow. It sits. It stays. Like a kitchen chair, or a rusted bicycle. If this is true, that success is a noun, an attainment, a termination, then it is possible to leave success on a book shelf, or in a trophy case, or under your bed in a memory box. Once you have it, it’s finished. And so are you.
But I’m here to tell you that success is absolutely NOT a noun. Success is an action. It’s a verb. Truly successful people are not content to reach their goals and stop. Quite to the contrary, successful people never settle. They never stop. They don’t finish at a temporary, finite award, or dollar amount, or degree. Success never sleeps.
Success is a state of mind. A state of being. As ESL teachers, to be successful means that we are actively instilling in our students the belief that they are capable. That they are smart enough. That they are good enough. That learning this language is fully within their reaches. When they believe that, they become successful people, because now, they can do anything.
Necessarily, there are certain requirements we must meet and guidelines we must adhere to. As I mentioned yesterday, standards are good things. But standards only scratch the surface of our jobs. We know there’s more. Much more.
Our duty as teachers is not to prepare our students for an exam. Our responsibility is not to condition them to believe that a test score is the terminus of attempt, or attainment of wealth that popular culture (and dictionaries) would have us all believe. No, teachers have a much higher calling. Our duty is to teach students to believe in themselves. Our job is to encourage, to mold, to shape young minds so that they continue to grow, mature, and influence their worlds long after they leave our classrooms.
Our responsibility is to produce truly successful people.
