Reach for the stars

Interesting day.
Found out late last night that one of my former students is leaving for NYC in the morning.  Really excited for her.  She is a talented dancer   and has been accepted into the New York Conservatory of Dance.  I'm  excited for her yet can't help being nervous for her.The city is mean; the career she has chosen is vicious and she is a sweet and sensitive young woman.  I don't want her destroyed by her dream, but I also don't want her to not go after it because of being afraid.   I also saw another of my students who has made great strides in reaching his potential make a post that shows better than anything he has professed previously that he is a man now.  Much sooner than I would have expected, yet not as soon as it could have been.  One of my greatest pleasures is when former students seek me out as adults or even on their way to adulthood.  I love their successes and sorrow for their problems-I refuse to call them failures because I have seen so many failures turn into successes because they have learned from them.  Many years ago, I was told by a teacher that she could not teach us everything we would need to learn in life.  Instead, she said she would do her best to teach us how to learn.  Obviously, she was more right than she could have ever imagined.  With technology that was only a glimmer in the sci fi writers eye being almost out of date now, had she not succeeded in teaching me how to learn, I would have floundered in a world that no longer exists. Instead I find the changes in the world fascinating if also a bit frightening. I have told so many of my students this very thing.  I can only hope that despite all the requirements to stick to the objectives and stay on the curriculum straight and narrow, my students have learned to think for themselves and know how to learn.  I want them to be as successful 43 years out of high school as I feel like I am.  I want them to reach for the stars and believe that with enough work, they can reach them.  I want them to believe in themselves no matter what anyone else says.  I want them to be the future I can believe in.