As adults, we have all kinds of notions about success and what it means for us and others. How often do we project our own view of success on others, especially our students and even our own kids as parents?
I have been thinking a lot about what success is for me as a parent and educator, about what it means more broadly in the education system but some of the most profound thoughts that I heard over the last few days were from students on what success means to them.
Here are some of the things I heard from our student panel:

• Success is my parents being proud of me.
• Success is growth that I recognize and so do others.
• Success is more than test scores and grades it’s about being happy with who you are because if you don’t have that none of the rest matters.
• Success is being able to get back up when you fail.

To be successful, many kids talked about being able to organize their life and manage tasks and figure out how to do it all even in middle school. I am still trying to figure this out myself to be honest. They acknowledged that they have had to learn a lot of these skills on their own and figure out how to manage the growing complexity as they moved from elementary school to middle school.
This reminded me of what students advocated in a change.org petition in which they asked the administration to broaden the narrow path of success defined by test scores and college acceptance. In this petition, the high school students begged the administration to “start defining success as any path that leads to a happy and healthy life. Start teaching us to make our own paths, and start guiding us along the way.”
It’s another reminder of how important it is that we don’t just teach kids the content. Instead, if we teach them the skills to manage their responsibilities, find and use information, they will be much better prepared to create new and better opportunities for themselves.