Success

Success is a noun meaning the achievement of something desired, planned, or attempted (dictionary.com). Everyone has a different perception as to what they consider successful. Some people feel money and material possessions equal success, while others find success in their careers and family achievements. I believe success is not something that always has to deal with achievements in the work world. Having a strong marriage and raising well-rounded children are two of the greatest accomplishments I want to achieve in my life. I hope to someday get married and raise a happy, healthy family. If I accomplish these things, I will consider myself having reached success. The following anonymous quote describes my personal perception of success in a nutshell: "You have achieved success if you have lived well, laughed often and loved much"-Anonymous (motivatingquotes.com).

I am an elementary education major. I want to become a teacher who parents request their children have. I hope to have an interactive classroom, where children will become excited about learning. I believe the feeling of success is major aspect in an educational career. A teacher feels successful when the students take away what they have learned from her. There are still little spelling and math tricks that I learned in elementary school that I still use today. The teachers that taught with enough enthusiasm for me to carry lessons I learned from them with me throughout my life are the teachers who encompass the quality of success that I hope to one day attain.

To be able to reach my personal goals toward success (marriage and family), a job and well-situated salary is essential. Teaching elementary school is something that I have been dreaming of doing my whole life. However, it is very difficult to find a job in an elementary school. Many of my friends who graduated from Rider last year as elementary education majors still have yet to find a job. Honestly, this scares me. I am the kind of person who plans out future plans well in advance, and the idea of being unemployed for a year or more after college graduation stresses me out beyond belief. This is why I had to re-evaluate my possible career paths. I was an elementary education and mathematics double major for my first three semesters at Rider. The math classes became too difficult, and after acquiring twelve math credits, I decided to drop the math major. Recently, I was talking to my big sister in my sorority about careers after college. She is a secondary education and biology double major so she is all set, but we were talking about elementary education job difficulties that I will face. She was telling me about how I shouldn’t be so complacent allowing twelve math credits to act only as electives, and I should put them to good use. By the end of our conversation, I decided to pick up the middle school minor with a concentration in math. I have been tutoring my neighbor in algebra and geometry for a few years, so I know that teaching math to middle schoolers is something I would be successful at and am interested in doing. By having a math concentration, I know that I have better chances of being successful when looking for an elementary education position. Also, if elementary education does not work out right away, I will still have something else to fall back on.

Being a female education major, I look up to a successful woman in the field of education, Marilyn Burns. She is famous for the many books she has written about teaching mathematics. She writes about ways to teach mathematics to children in a such a way that the mathematical ideas are grasped in an exploratory way. Discovery learning is something that Burns focuses on. She believes for students to reach success in what they are learning they must apply their own ideas to solve the problems presented to them. They might make mistakes along the way, but in the end students will gain a better understanding of mathematical concepts. Marilyn Burns says, “Success comes from understanding. Set the following expectation for your students: Do only what makes sense to you. Too often, students see math as a collection of steps and tricks that they must learn. And this misconception leads to common recurring errors-when subtracting, students will subtract the smaller from the larger rather than regrouping; or when dividing, they'll omit a zero and wind up with an answer that is ten times too small. In these instances, students arrive at answers that make no sense, and they rarely know why. Help students understand that they should always try to make sense of what they do in math. Always encourage them to explain the purpose for what they're doing, the logic of their procedures, and the reasonableness of their solutions” (content.scholastic.com).

Everyone perceives success differently. Some may see it as monetary based, while others are more family-oriented. At the end of the day, I am confident in stating that success is something personal, that only the individual can understand and grow from.