Teaching More than Textbook Education

   Grades. In many ways I don’t believe in grades. Yes, they are the only way to document a student’s efforts on paper, but in reality, they never tell the whole story. In high school you are surrounded by people born with extreme intelligence, people who have learned to work hard for their grades because they are not as fortunate, people who don’t care about grades, people who are unable to make grades their first priority, and so forth.

   Grades tell how many points a person accumulated over the course of the year, not the amount of effort he or she put into learning the class curriculum.

   As a student I have been guilty of attempting to rack up the points instead of racking up the knowledge, but in a college-bound society often times we are forced as students to do this.

   However, if you are lucky, you will come across a teacher that will force you to learn the value of slowing down and putting in hard work in order to obtain your goals.

   This past semester I came across just that.

   Through a group final, which I must admit I was not thrilled with, and three hours of sleep, I began to understand that more than anything else, life is unfair. It is the actions you choose to take that will decide your future.

   I thank my US History teacher for making the last project of the year, a project which decided my final grade, a group project. I thank her for placing me in a group of classmates that did not care about our final project. During the last day of school, these statements would have been sarcastic. But looking back at my experience, I am completely sincere.   

   As I presented the poster that day, standing beside the classmates who put in a small fraction of the effort I did into our final, I chuckled to myself. Even though all three of them would receive the same grade as I would, I knew that I learned a valuable lesson that they did not. I worked hard for my grade, and earned it through lack of sleep and persistence. And, although on paper we seem to have contributed the same level of effort, I know that we did not. In high school our grades may decide where we are going, but they do not reveal how far we will get. No matter what obstacle you are faced with, it’s the way you opt to deal with it that shows your true worth.