Saturday, March 28, 2015

TOMMIE SAYLOR: Stop worrying about grades and start thinking about effort and developing good work ethics


“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
-- Calvin Coolidge

By Tommie Saylor
Kennedy High School

It’s all about the work ethic, not about the grade.

Far too often students and parents get so caught up in the importance of the grade, that they forget that it’s about learning, it’s about effort and it’s about giving it your all. I would like to let students and parents in on a secret: In college or any post high school training, the one factor that breeds success is work ethic.

I have seen people who couldn’t think their way out of a wet paper bag earn a college degree because they refused to give up, never quit and/or kept taking the same class over and over again until they finally passed. Yet I have also know people much smarter than I, people who were borderline geniuses, yet could not get through college because they just could not bring themselves to do the work and put in the effort.

Knowing this, I always told my kids that as long as you give it your absolute best, I did not care what grade you earned, I was only interested in the level of effort. Don’t have missing assignments, late assignments, forget to study, or start working on a project the night before it is due.

Never bring home a book and/or homework and tell me you are really trying hard, because you are not. One of my children that brought home anything less than an “A” would make me very upset. That child was capable of achieving an “A” and how dare you give anything less than your absolute best!

Another child brought home a “C” and it made that child feel like a lottery winner. That child would spend six/seven hours every night at the kitchen table studying and working on assignments just to earn that “C”.

We should celebrate effort, for in the big scheme of things, I have never had a boss who gave me a grade, but they all wanted my absolute best effort on every assigned task.

I am the highest ranked graduate from my high school class with at least a four-year college degree, and in my graduating class I was only ranked number 15. I was not the Valedictorian, the Salutatorian or even in the Top 10, yet those who were ranked above me based on GPA never made it through college.

Why? Because those 14 people were not prepared to put in the effort. I enrolled in every advanced class my school offered. I took classes that those who were worried about their GPA would not even consider. In the end their GPAs were much higher than mine, but I was much better prepared for college and earned a degree where they had none.

The moral of this story: It’s not about the grade. It’s about the effort. It’s about preparing yourself for the rigors of college and life. It’s about what you have learned and what you can do.


In college it is all about performance. Professors don’t care about difficulties at home, what learning issues you have, that you struggle with tests or must watch a sibling after school hours. They only care about what you can produce.

Another little secret: No amount of parent “badgering” will change a professor’s mind, a grade, and most likely they will not even accept a parents phone call or return a parents phone call, about their student’s grade.

High school is not about earning points, about GPAs, nor about class rankings. It is about learning, developing skills, work ethic and passion. It is about becoming a productive taxpaying member of society. Those who forgo an honors class or an AP class because it may harm their GPA may be looking at a short-term gain, but at the expense of a long-term regret.

High school is where you prepare yourself for life, not where you peak in life. It is not the big show, but it is more like practice. No one cares about my high school GPA, all that they care about is that I do my job. They only care about my work ethic.

So, instead of squabbling over a few points here and there, we should be concerned that students are working to the fullest extent of their abilities. It’s OK for students to feel a little stress, to feel the pressure of performance. This is a common occurrence in life and they had better learn how to deal with it now as opposed to folding later as an adult.

They need to learn that maximum effort yields the potential for maximum rewards. If you want the good things in life, you have to work for it with an unwavering ethic, often for many years. There is no instant rewards, no prizes along the way, no medals, trophies or cheering section.

In 20 or so years, when your dreams are finally within your grasp, the five points you believe you were cheated out of in math class will mean nothing. What will be important are the lessons you learned regarding work ethic and a single-minded drive toward achievement of your goals.

If not anything else, only effort is a direct correlation between school and the real world. It’s the only thing that really counts.

What starts here, changes the world. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence by design....

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