Got resolutions?
Editor’s note: Teacher Talk is now accepting
questions about educational matters to be discussed in the column. You may
e-mail your question to
teacher@jaydavidson.com.
Dear Jay,
What suggestion do you have for children as young
as six and eight years old in making New Year’s resolutions?
C.R., Menlo Park
Dear C.R.,
This is a topic many people talk about during this
time of the year. I can’t remember the last time I made any, however.
For me, waiting until an arbitrary day comes along
(like January 1), is a passive approach that is doomed to failure. If a
change needs to be made, why wait to do it when the calendar changes?
Instead of encouraging children to make a
resolution for a calendar year, I suggest that parents and teachers help
them to recognize that they will get much further in life if they adopt an
attitude of not giving up, even in the face of adversity.
As examples of people who have shown remarkable
stick-to-it-iveness are:
- Thomas Alva Edison, the "Wizard of Menlo Park" (New
Jersey), who ran more than 9,000 experiments of running electricity
through various combinations of materials before successfully producing
the incandescent light bulb.
- Wilma Rudolph, an Olympic champion runner whose legs
were so crippled that she could not walk when she was a little girl. In
her words, "The doctor said I’d never walk. My mother said I would. I
believed my mother."
- Col. Harland Sanders, who retired at the age of 65 and
came up with the idea of selling his chicken recipe to restaurant owners
for the price of five cents per chicken that they sold. His first 1,008
sales calls turned him down. The 1,009th restaurant owner said yes. And
even after two years of making daily calls, he had signed up only five
restaurants. But he didn’t give up.
