Exploring The 'We're All Winners' Concept

[nlknauss]

I really think this is a great idea for discussion. It's really is sometimes interesting to walk by and hear someone say "we're all winners because _______" and wonder what the scope is that they are measuring their success on. We can all certainly agree that this is personally measurable and it's tough for anyone on the outside to understand what they may be feeling.

Success is measured on different scales, and as educators we're constantly taught to grant praise to students when they have achieved even the basic criteria for "success" (I'm not referring to 'A++'s). This is a tough task for many of educators/mentors because we know what lies ahead for our students once they have left the padded realm within our reach. Regardless, all students are different and many of them need to hear "success!" in order to have a sense of accomplishment or to remain motivated.

As an educator, I'm personally OK with that within the limits of praising personal effort. Really a team's effort can be measured by a trophy, medal, or performance on the field but it really is important to get individuals on our teams to feel like "winners" despite what really happens. Throughout the "FIRST" experience we're all taught that if we try hard we'll achieve some level of success down the road; it hits everyone differently!

Now how do we get students to be able to good personal critics of themselves without being overly punitive? The late Randy Pausch, author of "The Last Lecture", provides a great model for helping and really enabling the dreams of others. "The Last Lecture" has been discussed here, I highly recommend the book for anyone who would like to really dive in deep with this. But to summarize the section I'm referring to, he discusses his experiences in trying to get students to realize their abilities and to really become good critics of themselves. If we are able to figure out how to really make students great critics of themselves, we may not have to say to them "we're all winners" because they'll just know. That may be a tool that could be useful in any experience where they will see the benefits of their efforts without needing a measurable criterion for success.