Dear counsellor, I have repeated class three times now in o’level alone. no matter how hard i work , all my efforts appear to be in vain. I have come to a conclusion that i am not smart enough, and thus this kind of education isn’t meant for me. Should i drop out of school and find something else to do? what do i tell my parents as i feel they are wasting their resources on me. Please advise me. Yours didace

The principal goal for all students is to achieve their own highest level of success in supportive classrooms, taught by teachers who give the tools to overcome obstacles and learn to their fullest potentials. No student can be good at everything all the time. By virtue of being a learner, there are significant volumes of strengths within in your underlying abilities that you haven’t explored to discover you’re your full potentials. Therefore, there is nothing wrong with failing to achieve a given skill in a given learning area at a time. You never are going to know how good you really are until you go out and face failure. Pick yourself up and try several other competences.

All you need to do is to break the old traditional beliefs of associating class success with course grades and distinctions. You need to embrace the competency-based learning which ensures knowledge and skills acquisition that are deemed to be essential to success in school, higher education, careers and adult life. If you simply fail to meet expected learning standards at a particular time in class, you just need to receive additional instruction, practice time, and academic support to help you achieve competency, skill or meet the expected standards at a later time. It may be possible for these other students to pass their courses, earn the required number of credits, and receive a certificate without acquiring important knowledge and skills which I believe you can.

Competency-based learning is generally seen as an alternative to more traditional educational approaches in which students may or may not acquire proficiency in a given course or academic subject before they earn course credit, get promoted to the next grade level, or graduate

What makes teachers true educator is their acknowledgment, appreciation, and respect of students’ differences in learning abilities including fast learners and slow learners. Students’ diverse intelligences, talents, skills, interests, and backgrounds enrich the learning process. Draw closer to your teachers and high achieving classmates for special support and collaboration.

You must acknowledge that variations with individual students, different recognition capacities, learning styles, and responses to instructional materials and teaching techniques are health learning differences that bring diversity to the classroom and so you’re just part of these varieties who is unique in your own ways.

In addition, an education environment that values participation in cooperative activities will reduce your academic anxieties and build your confidence as you receive positive recognition for what you bring to the community of learners in terms of skills and other competences. Don’t give up with studies, you possess special skills which you need to discover and put to good use to excel you through all levels of education and guarantee your successful future.