I taught in Chicago Public Schools for four years, and during that time, my students came to love school.
If there was a difficult problem, we knew that we could break it down until it made sense. We knew that making mistakes was the best way to learn, and when we mastered a subject, it was time to learn something new.

These results didn't stem from rigorous rote learning. Too often, educators focus on raising test scores with tips and tricks, forgetting to acknowledge that the students taking those tests are individuals.

How can you expect a student to do well on a standardized test when that student feels like they're "no good" at that subject, and no one has shown them otherwise?

And the number of hard-working parents who know what their children are capable of find themselves having the same converstion over and over again. "If you just applied yourself..."

Students who apply themselves are students who have been shown that they are worth investing in. Once a student views education as a way to invest in themselves, I promise that their test scores will be on the rise, and school will become somewhere they love to be.