March and April are graduation months in this country and career options and career moves are two of the most asked questions among the the graduates. I am sure a lot of hopeful graduates are now ready to face more challenges in the coming days.

Graduates of colleges and universities are getting  ready to face “the real world.”

High school graduates on the other hand, are hopeful that they have chosen the right career options.

Amidst the jubilation of course, there are those who can’t celebrate this milestone. Yet. I know three of them, and they are candidates for high school graduation. All three took entrance exams to prestigious universities but passed none.

Disheartening of course, not only to them who are just starting to build dreams, but to their parents too, who, despite this setback, are still by their side, cheering them, encouraging them and telling them that all is not lost.

As a parent and a teacher, I know this is extremely difficult to accept for this setback reflects back to them too.

But as I have explained to a case conference a few days ago, career options are not limited to being a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant or maybe even getting a criminal justice degree.

There are several career options that they can look to, do things that they are capable of doing, things that they feel happy to do. When that happens, no one can tell them that they are not successful. Success is relative and personal preferences dictate how we measure success, not through the standards set by others.

As I have written before, whatever it is that (our) children want to achieve, we should guide them towards more reachable goals.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 10:21 pm and is filed under Being a (Special Ed) Teacher, Challenge Yourself, Interesting tidbits, Lessons in Life, Parenting, Teaching Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.