How Do We Define Success in the Classroom?

Children and adults define success in school differently. For a child, success is measured by whether they have friends, whether they are doing well academically, and how they are perceived by their peers. The class clown will feel success every time he cracks a joke in a class and the entire room bursts into laughter. Of course, the teacher won’t think that was a successful lesson, but the child will feel success.
To ensure both children and parents are using the same definition of success, parents need to be explicit when describing success for their children. When parents sit down with their children, they need to review the expectations they have and be clear about the ways they will measure success. Clear expectations about good behavior and academic achievement should be explained. If parents do not provide these explicit expectations, they should not expect the children to know how success is defined. It is also important to have conversations with the children throughout the year to measure success based on those expectations.
(Interview with Dr. Shimon Waronker, Ed.D for Operation Survival’s Prevention101 series. Dr. Waronker received his BA from the Univ. of Maryland; and Ph.D. from Harvard)