I want
to welcome you all to a very important occasion, the Village Presbyterian
Pre-School Growth Ceremony for the Class of 2023. When I was thinking about
what to say to you today I started thinking about what factors would determine
the future academic success of the children sitting before us today.
The
first thing is obvious. Their success will be determined by their level of
intelligence, their innate ability to grasp facts and process information.
However, even more important than native intelligence, is the ability to apply
that intelligence and to utilize it to its maximum.This, to a great extent, is determined by self-confidence.
If
children are self-confident they will fearlessly reach out to the world around
them with curiosity and enthusiasm.They will view failure as only a step along the way.They will not just grasp facts, they
will take information and make it their own and in the process they will shine.
As
teachers, looking out on these children whom we have grown to love, we remember
them as they were in September coming to us with their intelligence like a gift
in a box for us to carefully open and explore with them. And explore we did. In
the process magic happened and self-confidence grew.
Now they
not only know their alphabet and their numbers. They are beginning to fall in
love with the process of learning.They not only grasp the facts but they are confident enough to play with
their knowledge, to express their ideas to others, to recognize a problem and
solve it and to reason things through.Their confidence allows them to act in a play, sing before an audience
and create a story.They have
learned to be curious about the weather, the solar system and the human
body.They have eaten green eggs
and ham, had butterflies land on them and held chicks after watching them
hatch.They even decided to put on
clown make-up after saying ABSOLUTELY NOT!
And so,
looking out on this class, this group of brave, intelligent and self-confident
children, we are the confident ones. We are confident that they will shine
because they are STARS!
