Building an Identity for Success
Changing My Identity
After twenty years at the elementary and junior high level, I had the opportunity to take a position teaching high school math. I loved teaching younger students, but I felt the draw to try something new and stretch myself. The transition was exciting and the move allowed me the opportunity to redefine my identity as an educator and to explore a new professional challenge. I fully embraced the mystery my future held because I knew that success was inevitable with the right attitude, approach, and identity.
Changing Identity in Academics
When I entered my new classroom, I was greeted with four blank white walls. I decided to use these walls to send a clear message to my students and to myself. The message was that in this room, we were seeking quality growth and deep learning as opposed to rules and mindless, shallow task work. We were focused on process-based goals, not the outcome-based goals. Our daily intention would be to shape our identities as learners. For this reason, I decided to dedicate the main wall to send a simple daily message. Every day we entered the classroom, my students and I would all see four posters with the message, “I’m the kind of person who is…” “PREPARED,” “FOCUSED,” and “FEARLESS.” All of the expectations and rules could be summed up on these posters. We were creating our identities. What does a prepared person look like? What does a focused person look like? What does a fearless person look like? These qualities build the identity of deep learners with growth mindsets. These qualities can be nurtured every day. These qualities will be valuable long after they leave my classroom. The message is clear and simple yet powerful. Define your identity. Practice living with that identity.
Changing Identity in Athletics
My desire for simplicity and identity building as a teacher also holds true as a coach. After eighteen years of coaching tennis, I have refined all of my lessons down to two simple steps to success. Step 1: show up. Step 2: keep showing up. I understand the value and power of incremental gains over time. I understand that growing talent and skill is like growing plants in a garden. Small improvements over a long period of time produce natural, organic growth and incredible results. There is no rushing the process. A plant needs soil, water, sunshine, and time in order to grow. An athlete needs practice, focus, patience, and time in order to grow. As gardeners and coaches, we need to understand the ingredients. The ingredients do not change, but with the right kind of nurturing, the identity does.
Changing Identity in Adversity
Recently I began serving as chaplain in our local jail. I had been volunteering for some time but felt the need to devote more time to these at-risk men and women. My desire and decision to serve in this position was because I could see in their lives the same adversities and obstacles faced by many of my struggling students. As a public school teacher, my mission is to encourage and nurture academic, social, and emotional growth in my students. These students enter my classroom with a wide variety of life experiences, and many come loaded with obstacles and risk factors. Often, we see the result of these factors culminate as learning and behavior problems. Unfortunately, these students and these inmates are not properly equipped to make the daily choices that lead to success in the classroom and in life. In recent years, I have spent a great deal of time studying brain-based learning, social-emotional learning, and trauma informed care. There are of course many strategies to help meet students’ needs, but the most powerful common thread to helping high-risk learners seems to be building healthy, supportive relationships.
“Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People, not programs, change people.” ― Dr. Bruce Perry, The Boy Who Was Raised As a Dog: And Other Stories from a Child Psychiatrist's Notebook.
“Deep learning is profoundly relational, and connection to one another is a prerequisite for our collective emotional, social, spiritual, and cognitive growth and development.” -Dr. Lori Desautels, Unwritten: The Story of a Living System.
I find that working with the men and women in jail is similar to working with students who have learning and behavioral struggles. In fact, many inmates were themselves struggling students, and we can identify and address these needs in the same way. Build relationships with learners and grow the identities of the learners. It is our responsibility to build healthy, trusting relationships so we can share in the journey and face learning obstacles together. When we do this, we can demonstrate our care, build the relationship, and work together to build an identity of success.
Changing the Identity of Success
So what does success looks like? Successful learners have an identity. This identity is nurtured and developed over time, often with the help of a trusted teacher or mentor. Developing success in academics, in athletics, and in adversity is a process, not an outcome. Successful teachers and mentors also have an identity. This identity is nurtured and developed over time by investing in people and building trusting relationships. These relationships grant us permission to support the process of growth, development, and identity transformation of the learners. Building an identity of success is a process, and this is the process.
Be the kind of person who is prepared, focused, fearless.
Be the kind of person who shows up and keeps showing up.
Be the kind of person who overcomes obstacles.
As teachers, coaches, and chaplains, we teach identity development by building meaningful, caring relationships. By modeling and teaching identity. By helping learners overcome obstacles by building an identity of success. We do this by building relationships, and in those relationships, we model how to show up and continue showing up. We help learner build successes by focusing on process goals of preparation, focus, and fearlessness.
What does success look like? Success is a partnership between teacher and learner focused on identity building. This partnership is rooted in positivity and nurtured with a growth mindset. As teachers and mentors, it is our responsibility to build the identity of success in ourselves and in our students.
