“We choose our own path, and we make meaning of our own mission.”
The Lion
Great to finally have some time to spend with the two older kids. Normally in the mornings, the kids are at school and I’m busy at work.
Four days of PSLE marking means that all the Primary School kids are at home, and I’m not engaged in school so much this week.
I get to enjoy my morning coffee at home and to supervise my daughter preparing for her year-end examinations. My son is more fortunate this year, not having examinations for now… he gets to enjoy his breakfast. 😛
The irony for me as an educator is that I seem to be spending more time and energy working with other people’s kids instead of my own. This has been one of my struggles being in this line of work, and I believe many other educators in Singapore share a similar struggle. I’m just glad for the little pockets of time that we can share together.
Every child is different and has different strengths. My daughter has a lovely soul, and she has the knack of reaching out to everyone with her bubbly personality. In her academic work however, she is not as strong as her two younger brothers. That’s actually fine with me, but because of this, I do feel the need to spend a bit more time helping her with her work. I want her to feel that she has our support and that we are giving her every opportunity to learn and to find her own success.
In the end, grades will be grades. Grades are only useful for opening the door to the next stop in the educational journey. Our focus should always be more on the process of learning rather than the result. In the end, the character qualities we develop as we learn count for so much more than the actual numerical grades that we achieve.
In life, our success is never measured by a single number. We decide how our own success will be measured, we choose our own path, and we make meaning of our own mission.
Little Lion's Lifebook 