When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching.
在我27岁的时候,我辞去了一份非常有挑战性的职业,企业管理咨询,转而投入了一份更加具有挑战性的职业:教育。
I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools.
我来到纽约的一些公立学校教7年级的学生的数学。
And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests.
和别的老师一样,我会给学生们做小测验和考试。
I gave out homework assignments.
我会给他们布置家庭作业。
When the work came back, I calculated grades.
当这些试卷和作业收上来之后,我计算了他们的成绩。
What struck me was that I.Q. was not the only difference between my best and my worst students.
让我震惊的是,IQ的高低并不是我最好的和最差的学生之间唯一的差别。
Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric I.Q. scores.
一些在课业上表现很好的学生并不具有非常高的IQ分数。
Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well.
一些非常聪明的孩子反而在课业上表现的不那么尽如人意。
And that got me thinking.
这引起了我的思考。
The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram.
当然,学生们在7年级需要学习的东西是有难度的,像比率,小数,平行四边形的面积计算。
But these concepts are not impossible,
但是这些概念是完全可以被掌握的,
and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.
我坚信我的每一位学生都可以学会教材内容,只要他们肯花时间和精力的话。