Don't Fail

so a lot of students when they're starting school are kind of afraid they might feel like they might have taken a class that might be a little more too difficult it's fine it's just a sign that it's time for me to do something different I think we've all had that feeling of that unknown maybe you've heard some things about the teacher from previous students or you know that students that have taken that class before and they really struggled and you kind of like looked up to them thinking they were smarter than you and so sometimes we have this worry about failing especially if we've already had struggles in a previous course and I think math is probably the most famous people constantly say I'm always math I know I'm not going to do good well students walk into a test like I know I'm not going to do good in this test well that's not a really good mindset to have going into a test or going into a course the reality is students fail even in my classes students failed my class A lot and I recorded all of my lectures right I put everything on YouTube but that still didn't avoid and again that wasn't supposed to be a solution for students not to fail my class there are some specific things that I think that all students should follow to not fail not just in their math class but for any class so what I want to do in this video is just kind of go over really just three things that I want you to think about and or how to approach your class so that you will not fail it's pretty simplistic but I truly do believe if you approach your class with these kind of like mindsets or these approaches it's going to make failing a little bit more difficult and I'm saying a little bit more difficult because ladies and gentlemen the reality of life is there's going to be failures there's going to be impasses in your life there's going to be challenges and guess what the further you go along the more challenges you're going to get it doesn't matter how smart you are how rich you are we all deal with challenges it's a part of life let's go and take a look at some things that we can do so we can avoid looking at failing our class the first thing a lot of students always asked why I stepped away from teaching they say like oh you know was it like you make so much money on YouTube or teachers don't make enough money or teaching has changed for how when I was a teacher and stuff like that well the simple answer is I stepped away from teaching because I could not do everything that I wanted to do as a teacher one thing that I constantly talked about is you know my last year of teaching is when we had our third child and at that point in time I think I had our 5-year-old a four-year-old and a newborn my life was was pretty crazy and obviously as a parent my number one Focus was my children and that is something that I wanted to make sure that I could be there for them having children and being a parent is very very timec consuming teaching is also something that is very very timec consuming that's why you see a lot of teachers you know they step away from the classroom when they're having a child or take care of their children at any Walk of Life now for my first two children I was able to get by but it was extremely busy with some very very late nights and I put in a lot of work late at night and early mornings to get things done because I still had that focus and vision of being there everywhere for my students once I have the third child I kind of realize I can't put in what I needed to put in to being a teacher as well as to a parent I realize I was stretching myself too thin that is one of the bigger reasons why I stepped away from the classroom and what I want you to come away from this is when you're trying to like not avoid a class or trying to fail a class what you need to maybe take a look at is what are you spending your time doing because the Paro principle is one that says the 80% of the output is going to come from 20% of a certain effort and so what I want you to do is focus on what is the most important or one thing I found from a lot of students is that they focus on what Jim rly say minor things you got to focus on the major things what are the things that are the most important to that class what are the things that are going to move the needle the most I as somebody always wants to do everything I can I always want to be the best at everything and try to take on as many responsibilities as possible but I've started to realize and understand it's just not possible for students a lot of time that comes into trying to take all AP classes or take a part of every club and every sport and everything like that there's a lot of points to be able to really push yourself I also want you to kind of focus on like when you only have limited amount of time you got to focus on what is the most important and I think a lot of times sometimes we put so much time and effort into things that aren't really going to maybe change our grade or going to make us get you know past the class or or get the best grade if you are limiting your time one try to think of there's things that you can limit or reduce so therefore you can focus more time on that class or even if you are just limited and that's the way things are going to be try to focus on the things that are the most important you know the most important problems those problems that you see time and time again focus on what activities are going to give you the best result it all comes down to being strategic that is what the Paro principle is going to teach you about focusing on that 20% be strategic in what you're spending your time and focusing on don't try to do everything okay cuz if you try to do everything and you try to be the best in everything it's going to be very difficult to maintain that on the long run yes it happens but over the long run you're end up burning yourself out my freshman year I took like a reduced class load cuz I wanted to focus on being really good at math because I knew I struggled with math so I was like I'm going to have to spend a lot of time focusing on my math class so I did not take like a full full schedule I actually didn't even know about it now but now I think about it when I was thinking about these notes I was like hey I actually did that on purpose like I reduced my workload so I could focus on that specific class cuz I know I was like I need to learn this stuff here's the embarrassing thing I took pre-calculus as a senior and I didn't even test into the pre-calculus in college I tested into intermate algebra the class below pre-calculus and that was kind of embarrassing especially for one person that was supposed to be a math teacher right Math teachers were in calculus their freshman year I was in algebra okay kind of embarrassing and then even more embarrassing I think I failed my first test in algebra in college I was like oh I can definitely do Algebra this is good I know all the stuff and yeah I failed it so what did I do I went to the tutor lab every single day every single day I did my homework in the T lab every single time I had a quiz or a test I was studying or I was reviewing them with the tutor and you know what it was embarrassing because most of the students that were in that tutor lab were ones that like always struggled with math and everything else and here I was getting help as Somebody That was supposed to be an expert or a math teacher I had to have humility to be able to walk into that room and say I need help and I think that's a hard thing for a lot of times students they don't want to let people know that they need help right A lot of times we sit in the class we don't understand something and rather than raising our hand and asking a simple question that is a very verified like why you don't understand something and we just say you know what maybe I'll understand it later maybe I'll ask somebody later and that usually doesn't happen so the next step guys to avoiding failing your class it's really obvious but sometimes it can be really hard because we have our pride we have our social life and something we just don't want people to know that we're struggling or we don't understand but we got to own it and it's to get help when you have questions ask questions the most common question I usually get on these live streams is Mr mclogan how can I do better in my class or you know how can I pass class and I'm like do the work and ask questions it's really a two-step principle I mean that that's about it so if you can focus on realizing when you are struggling and get help immediately don't wait get help immediately go to office hours with your teacher stay after school go to a lab take advantage of free resources go to my Discord server ask questions there there's tons of amazing people that are online that are willing to help you with your questions watch YouTube videos I know like there's tons of AA opportunities for you guys get a private tutor pay some money if you're able to afford it but I think the same thing is like sometimes students especially the older and older we get the more we don't want to let other people know that we're struggling and I think to avoid that you're going to fail a class or get into deeper trouble you have to be able to get help when you need help if we're talking about embarrassing things let's talk about another embarrassing thing that I actually actually don't talk that much about and that was actually when I was going to take my real estate exam so when you want to be a realtor all you have to do is you know I think have a high school education and you can just go and take like a 40-hour course or something like that and then you have an exam and I was teaching at this time it was you know back in 2010 my YouTube channel had just started but I needed it to real estate because I was trying to make you know as much money whatever as I could so I was hustling one of the things that you had to do was like there's a like a law there's a math portion everything that like as a a licensed realtor they want to make sure testing that you know so I was obviously pretty confident in the math version right you know like I understood the math I was like okay yeah I'm good like so I didn't really put that much time into it I wasn't very well versed in law so I spent a lot of time like studying all those the problems and questions and stuff like that and then I took the test and guess what I failed I think you needed like 70% or something like that and I got like a 68% it was literally down to like one or two questions you could either retake the test like another time or you could pay to get you your answer well of course I wouldn't pay to get to my answers I'm like what did I get wrong embarrassingly I got like two of the math questions wrong and there was a couple other questions that I'm like I had no idea what the answer was but then there was two problems that I got wrong on the math and I was like crap I'm a math teacher can't be getting this stuff wrong but I looked at it I realized what I did it was much more I would say I attributed much more to my testing policy I read the question I thought one way and I didn't adjust um I didn't really read through what I needed to do so I did the wrong math work and arrived at a different wrong answer but the thing was that stunk to fail that but guess what I did I studied the math I focused more on the math portion I reviewed all the law cases everything I needed to do I retook the test and I passed with like flying colors so probably I think like somewhere in the mid 80s or something like that and the thing that I want you to understand is to avoid failure you have to keep on getting up for the little failures it's about like the football you think about like the main goal like people say like win the Super Bowl win the Super Bowl on winning the Super Bowl that's the main thing like you got to get there are you going to lose games of course are you going to lose like third Downs conversions yes of course there's going to be little failures they're going to happen I've been a licensed realtor since 2010 I didn't let that one little failure stop me and say all right real estate's too hard I'm not going to become a real you're going to have failures you're going to have setbacks you're going to have challenges you have to learn to overcome them don't get down and out and say I quit just because something didn't go your way so you're going to have quizzes you're going to struggle on you're going to have tests you're going to fail but again you can still pass the course I used to tell this with students all the time they would fail quarter one with me and I say hey you know what you're working hard like you can pass this class I just failed I'm going to I want to drop out of this class you're not my teacher I can't deal with you I'm like no you need some time to get used to me unfortunately it took a quarter and unfortunately the great is what it is but I know it I see in you that you can be successful in my class and time and time again multiple students that I have had struggled that first quarter D's fs and guess what ended up with A's and B's it's possible if you're willing to learn from your mistakes learn from your challenges and your setbacks but don't give up and keep on working through it the only time that students failed my course is one when they would give up and they would stop trying that is it and so I hopefully if you can use these three kind of tips throughout this video I'm telling you don't give up you can do it I believe in you