I presented the following slides and video to my daughter's 5th grade class. The topic was Career Day but my daughter asked that I share my "amateur" career instead of my career. I tried to put in a few life lessons to tie the things I learned from years of training and competing to what is required for a successful career.
The students were very attentive, asked some great questions after and (I hope) made some connections between my messages and their own meaning of goal setting and accomplishments. The teachers were very grateful and appreciative. They said the messages were right on target, which was good to hear -- I was heavy on the "you are not ENTITLED to any success -- you EARN it by hard work". That seems to be at odds with the public school mentality of teaching self esteem before reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic, so I was glad that for now, anyway, my daughter has a teacher that agrees with helping the kids to understand accountability.
I believe we are all responsible for helping our kids and the kids around them to be better citizens and people by example and by sharing our values with them. We cannot force anyone to believe us or listen to us, but we should do all we can to share our experiences to help them grow into responsible adults.
