Describe a student you teach that you know will be successful. What qualities does that student possess that indicate future success? Will the culture and policies of your school facilitate towards or detract from the student's likelihood of obtaining future success? How so?
I teach many students who I feel will be successful, but there is one student in particular that I know will succeed no matter who does or does not help her. She is like a force that cannot be stopped - if forces were also generally considered terribly nice and quiet as mice. Kay* is an excellent student academically and behaviorally. I have never given her a consequence, not even one warning. She is at every after school tutoring session, and if for some reason she does not have a homework assignment at the time it is due, she will return a few periods later in the day with everything in order. Her fault, if examining her through the lens of a teacher, is that she is often tardy to class due to arriving at school late. I can always count on Kay to have the right answer when I call on her, or to be able to see her saying the answer under her breath whenever another student is answering.
While I do love how booksmart she is, Kay has qualities that cannot helped but be followed by success. She is consistent and follows up on her word, portraying a sense of sincerity in all her interactions (at least the ones that I have witnessed). I absolutely love to see her desire to learn and better herself. The intrinsic motivation to learn is a piece that I believe every teacher craves to see in each pupil, but since it can be hard to define ways to fit that piece into place, it is one that often goes unseen. On parent conference day, she sent her father back to the school after him already making the rounds of her classes because he had forgotten to stop by my room to pick up her progress report. I of course had nothing but good things to say to him, which is the best type of conference to have with a parent when well-deserved. Kay is also an amazing writer, and I have heard from other teachers that she wants to be an author when she is older. Beyond that motivation to attain a hefty goal like being an author, merely being a skilled reader and writer can get a person very far in life. Writing and reading are two areas that my students struggle heavily with, so any advantage one has in those fields will pay off mightily in a school such as mine.
I think the school I work in and am involved in does not fully foster Kay's creativity, desire for knowledge, or skill sets that she already possesses. There is much that we will not be able to do for her, but being that I do believe she is self-motivated, I think she will be able to overcome any obstacles encountered because of her high school society. There are many opportunities she will miss out on by going to this school, but again I do not believe that her success will be erased because of this. Sure she may have ended up in a very different place later in life with having gone to a more privileged and well-equipped high school, but she has what it takes to make a bright future for herself nonetheless.
*Names changed
