Episode 11 - Beyond Grades: I Was Never a Straight "A" Student, But...

In this episode of Faith Meets Academia, Dr. Reynolds takes you way back in time and shares his personal journey through high school, emphasizing the message that you are more than your grades. Reflecting on his own struggles and experiences, he discusses the importance of balancing academic achievements with essential life skills like consistency, resilience, and teamwork. He also highlights the crucial role of having a supportive community, and the impact of insightful educators who can see beyond grades. Join Dr. Reynolds as he dives deep into stories that reveal the true potential beyond letter grades and offer encouragement for students and educators alike.

Outline

1.  My own struggles and experiences in high school and how they shaped me.
2. The crucial role of having encouraging and supportive people around you.
3. The pitfalls of focusing solely on grades and competition.
4. Why traits like punctuality, trustworthiness, and being a team player matter more than straight A's.
5. Reflections on how great educators can see beyond grades and help unlock students' potential.
6. Approaching learning and teaching with a balanced perspective.

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DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely my own and do not reflect or represent the positions, policies, or opinions of my employer, any organization or academic institution with which I am affiliated. This podcast is a personal initiative, and is not connected to my official/ formal duties and responsibilities as a university professor.

Transcript

Welcome to Faith Meets Academia, Biblical Foundations for Scholarly Pursuits. I'm your host, Dr. Adrian Reynolds. Thanks for joining me on this transformational journey where the sacred and the scholarly converge.

As a university professor and ordained minister, I stand at the intersection of educational innovation and biblical wisdom. Are you tired of having to separate your spiritual calling from your academic profession? If so, you've found your community.

In this community, we use biblical principles to illuminate our scholastic endeavors. In this community, we leverage academic concepts and theories to magnify the reach and impact of our spiritual gifts. Yes, your faith and your scholarship can forge a mutually sustaining partnership.

I'm here to help you bridge the gap between your academic work and your spiritual journey.

Translation, hey family, welcome back. Thanks for joining me for this episode of FMA, Faith Meets Academia.

I pray you'll have a most relaxing, productive, fun-filled week, if you could manage to put all those three together.

But hey, I believe in you, I know you can do it.

Now remember, if this podcast has been a blessing to you and I am certain that it has, based on the feedback that I received, please leave a rating and or a review, share it with family, share it with a friend, share it with your colleagues, and let's continue to grow this movement toward combining our faith, our spiritual journey, with our work. As we know, faith and works go hand in hand. Speaking of feedback, I'd like to read for you a review that I recently received from Reverend Alton Lee Sr. And it reads, whether you want to set the tone for your day or simply add some tools to your tool belt to help you on your spiritual or professional journey, Faith Meets Academia is the podcast for you.

Dr. Reynolds provides great insights on topics ranging from faith, gratitude, and mindfulness, to name a few, and uses scriptures to show how to apply these principles to your life.

The podcast is well-produced with clear audio quality and a structure that supports easy listening and engagement, all right?

So there you have it. Big shout out to Reverend Alton Lee Senior.

Thanks for tuning in. Keep listening.

Thanks for your support.

I keep spreading the word.

Couldn't do this without listeners like you.

It's so enriching. It's so encouraging and motivating to be surrounded by a supportive community, all right? I mean, with any new undertaking that you're pursuing, it's, I can't emphasize how crucial it is to surround yourself with people who can give you good quality feedback, who can cheer you along, who can encourage you when you feel down, because yeah, I have my moments where that voice of doubt kind of creeps in.

It takes consistency. It takes a lot of effort and time to keep putting out these high-quality episodes. But hey, with God on your side, everything is possible, all right?

And I know I was meant to do this.

I know I am fulfilling God's purpose and there's no turning back.

This episode has quite an interesting title, all right?

I was never a straight A student, but the central goal of this episode is to really send a message by being totally transparent about my own story and my academic journey. And in particular, I'm gonna be focusing on the high school phase. That was many, many years ago, but there are so many lessons that I continue to learn from that phase of my life even to this day.

But the central focus of this episode, the goal here is to let you know that you are more than your letter grade. If you're still in school or you're in college, I wanna let you know that you are not your grade. If you are a working professional, I wanna let you know today that, I wanna let you know today that you are more than that annual evaluation score.

Whether you're a student, whether you're a working professional, your grades, your scores, they don't define who you are.

You transcend that, you go above that, you go beyond that. Your grades alone won't lead to your ultimate success. Your grades in themselves.

Hey, let's face it. I mean, there are millions of people out there without college or graduate school degree who are highly successful and highly impactful and are making a big difference in our world. For those of us who have gone the academic route, who have earned an academic degree, that's just the choice that we have made, but that's not to say that that's the only way.

So don't get sidetracked with grades and scores, right? Because whether you've made straight As, no As, if you can't get up out of bed in the morning to get dressed and be in time for work because you're hitting that snooze button like 10 times, it doesn't matter how many As you have.

If you can't get along with people, if you're not a team player, your grades on your transcript, they don't mean a thing.

So there are these traits, these qualities that one absolutely needs to have, right? Being consistent, being resilient, being on time, being trustworthy, dependable, and yes, even being likable. I mean, if you really wanna get stuff done, people have to enjoy working with you because I mean, we can't do everything by ourselves, right?

I mean, that's just the reality.

And sometimes the messages that we send in our society by this hyper emphasis on scores and grades lead our children to believe that that's all that matters. And that's the kind of message that we don't wanna send because they'll run into problems in their adult life if that's their perception of what success means.

Now, at this point, you may be wondering, hold on, is this guy like anti-academic excellence?

Like I shouldn't aim for 4.0?

No, no, no, that's not my point.

If you've been following this podcast for the past two and a half months, I mean, you would know or should know by now that of course I am for academic excellence.

Better yet, I am for introducing to you the research-based science of learning strategies that you'll need to get there, which are also supported by the word of God.

The point I'm making is that, yes, academic excellence is important, and different folks may define excellence in different ways. Academic excellence is important, but it's not the only thing that defines success. Balancing academic achievements with essential, must-have life skills is absolutely crucial, indispensable for holistic success and well-being.

Holistic success and well-being.

Now I'm going to go back in time, and I'm gonna walk you through a high school report card. It was for the school year 1994 to 1995.

July 1995, to be specific.

I was 15 years old.

I had just completed my junior year of high school, so I was a rising senior, if you will.

All right, I'm looking at the report card right now. Yeah, my mom, she saved all this stuff thanks to her. There's some background information at the top that I'll start with.

Times late, two, whoa, yeah, wasn't a straight A student, but it was hardly ever late, mm-hmm.

Class rank, 10th, so basically that means when they looked at my overall academic performance, I was in 10th position out of 30 students.

You had to know your position relative to the rest of the other students, right?

I mean, you see how they set this up to be inherently competitive, right?

I guess it would just be too labor intensive to assess the unique God-given abilities of each student. So, you know, let's just put a value on the work of each student by comparing them to their peers, right?

I mean, well, it really shouldn't be that labor intensive if we are making good use of technology. With the emergence of AI-infused teaching and learning, that should take a lot of the painstaking mundane tasks out of the teaching and learning process. But anyway, that's for another episode for another time.

So yeah, the system has a way of sending the message that this is more about competition than competence, unfortunately.

I had no detentions, no suspensions, times absent, none.

And I do believe they're talking about unexcused absences here.

I know I was absent a few times at different points throughout the year, but I'm sure those were excused absences because I do take off for my yearly Passover event and another church event in January, but those probably weren't counted as actual absences because they were excused.

School activity, Spanish club.

Oh, yeah, I remember that. I remember that.

Did a number of performances. This was in Jamaica, by the way.

I did a number of performances island wide. Yeah, those are some fun times. Yeah, Spanish class was my favorite by far.

So school activity, Spanish club, choir.

Yes, I recall I was the lead singer in the school, in the high school choir. Yep, yep.

Debating society.

That's interesting. I probably didn't last for too long in the debating club.

I don't have very vivid memories, actually, of being in the debating society.

I probably wasn't very involved in the debating society.

Or maybe I was in the society, but didn't make the cut to get on the debating team. Because not everybody who was in the society was on the team. I was much more into the Spanish club than the debating society.

But anyway, it's listed.

So there it is.

All right, so now let's get to the good stuff.

So let's see what were their grades like for that year.

All right, to start off, English language, classwork, B minus, exam, I think that must have been the final exam, 62%, class rank, seventh. That's why I came in seventh, please. English literature, B, exam, 50%, class rank, 13th.

This teacher said, disappointing.

Yeah, I told you, I was not a straight A student.

However, dear teacher, you would be pleased to know that 17 years later, I wrote a 341-page dissertation, mind you, in English, which has been downloaded close to 11,000 times. Doesn't sound too disappointing at all. Now, let's see how I did in Spanish that year.

Spanish, classwork, B-. Oh my goodness, you must be kidding me.

in Spanish, what?

You know what, you know what this leads me to conclude? I think my test speaking anxiety, because listen, I love Spanish.

Like I was the kid who was reading Spanish to both Spanish speaking and non-Spanish speaking folks in the community. I remember this lady who had migrated to Jamaica from Cuba when she was like, when she was really young, like eight or nine, didn't speak English at all.

Didn't speak English at all when she had just arrived as a child.

But of course, being in an English dominant society, learned it pretty well over the years.

And I remember reading, I remember reading a passage to her.

I remember it so clearly.

It was about the Panama Canal.

The passage was titled, "El Canal de Panama."

And I mean, the glow on that lady's face as she listened to me reading that passage was just unforgettable.

It's like she was saying, man, I'm reconnecting with my roots.

That's a moment I will never forget.

Yeah, I mean, I was the one who was like tutoring my friends when it came to Spanish, man. Like I was the Spanish guy.

Exam, 41, 41% in Spanish? Like, did I miss something? Did I complete the entire exam?

Yeah, this test taking anxiety thing, I think it went beyond math.

I definitely think it affected me across all subject areas, even including Spanish.

Class rank, 10th out of 20 students.

And this teacher, like the one before, says disappointing exam results. Well, dear Spanish teacher, you would be so proud to know that six years later, just six years later, I earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in, guess what? Drum roll.

Graduated with honors, Bachelor of Arts in Spanish.

Not only that, there's more.

I went on to become state certified in the teaching of Spanish K through 12 in the state of Florida.

And I taught Spanish, and I taught high school Spanish for three years.

That's because I knew I was better than my grades. That's because I didn't allow my grades to define me. Even though line after line on this report, I see disappointing results, disappointing.

I knew I wasn't a disappointment. There's a difference. When you know who you are in Christ Jesus, when you know you're a child of the King, you don't allow this to define you.

You don't allow this to shape your destiny. Look at me now.

But you know what I think is disappointing?

Nowhere in the comments section on this report card does it mention specific areas.

I'm talking about specific formative feedback, right?

That's what leads to improved performance.

Nowhere does it mention specific areas for improvement or better yet, strategies I could use to actually improve.

On the other hand, however, I took careful note of the fact that there were a number of teachers who commented that he's capable of doing better, could do better.

Hmm, so why wasn't he doing better? I mean, that's a question I would ask as an educator.

What's going on? What are the obstacles that are hindering this kid from performing better? If I know he has the potential to do better, then what do I need to do?

Do I have a responsibility to help him to unlock that potential to do better? But like I said, you know, I mean, these teachers, God bless them, they tried their best.

They were just teaching the way they were taught and the way they were taught how to teach.

Coaching wasn't a thing for them. Science of learning, I mean, that was just nonexistent for them. So I'm not, you know, I'm not really blaming them because they were just teaching exactly how they were trained.

Hopefully things have improved.

So what I'm gathering from this is that despite the scores, despite the grades, despite, you know, what they label as disappointing results, they felt like I did have the skills, the capacity to do better.

And I really think that they believe that this wasn't it for me, that this, that these grades, these results would not shape my future. And here's how I know. I know that based on just this one encounter I had with one of my high school teachers when I went back to Jamaica some time ago, I don't think I had even started my master's program yet.

I think I was just about to.

And I think the encounter I had with this gentleman, Mr. Watson is his name, the encounter I had with him, I think probably represented how my teachers felt about where I was headed in the future. So I'm walking through the town and running to Mr. Watson and he greets me with a big bright smile. And then comes this question.

How many degrees do you have now?

As I'm here doing this episode, it kind of made me a little emotional just thinking about that moment. I mean, this was probably close to like five years after I had already graduated high school. How many degrees do you have now?

By that time, I had only completed my bachelor's in Spanish.

And Mr. Watson's class was Agricultural Science.

Agricultural Science, I remember that class so well. And to this day, I don't even have a garden. What a shame, I need to get that going.

But anyway, for my classwork, I got a B. For the exams, 68%. And class rank, eighth out of 11.

So close to last place.

And his comment says he is quite keen and attentive.

When Mr. Watson posed that question to me, how many degrees do you have now? It sent a clear message that despite the score or the grade that I had received in his class, despite not being a straight A student, despite coming in at eighth place out of 11 students, despite all of that, he had high hopes for me.

He had high expectations.

He knew that I would keep going.

He knew that I would go to college.

He knew that I would earn more than one degree. One of the biggest factors, know this, one of the biggest factors in any student's academic success is having a well-qualified, highly competent teacher. But I would like to add something to that.

Great educators have great insight. What I mean by that is they can see beyond grades. They can see beyond scores.

And those with such insight, they have opened up a world of opportunities. And without this insight, there are many people who would not have been accepted to medical school, law school, business school, graduate school, you name it.

Because based on their scores alone, they wouldn't have made the cut.

And to sum it all up, when I read the comment from my form teacher, that's who would be like your homeroom teacher, we would call it here. In Jamaica, they call it form teacher. Here in the States, homeroom teacher, my homeroom teacher saw beyond the Cs and the Bs and the B minuses on this report.

She read all the other teacher's comments, but she clearly saw the qualities that would get me to where I am today. Here's what she says. Adrian is a gentleman.

He enjoys a good rapport with his peers and his attendance and punctuality records are very good. He's a conscientious student and he is a good example for his peers.

I was never a straight A student, not in high school or college.

My academic record in college and grad school was definitely sharp contrast to these grades that I read to you because clearly my approach to studying changed drastically, for the better, of course.

So I was never a straight A student, but as a child, my grandmama called me Dr. Adrian.

And that's even before I could speak.

And guess what? At some point, at some point in college, I decided I'm gonna go to grad school and I'm gonna get a PhD.

And one day they're gonna call me Dr. Reynolds.

And it came to pass.

I did the work and I earned the title. And this point is worth stating again. It's crucial that whatever journey you're on, whatever vision you have for your life, whatever you're trying to accomplish, that you're surrounding yourself with people who believe in your potential to succeed and can speak a word of prophecy into your life.

I don't think it's any accident.

I don't think it's any coincidence that I ended up earning a PhD. Because my grandmother was calling me Dr. Adrian even before I knew myself.

I was never a straight A student, but I had a thirst for learning.

I had a resilience that could not be quenched. Always studying, always giving my best effort, even when that resulted in a C or D grade.

And you know what?

In our household, I never felt any pressure from my parents to make straight As.

No, there was none of that pressure.

I guess they knew I was doing my best because they would see me studying and they knew I took my work seriously.

But in terms of the letter grade itself, I wasn't under any pressure at all. I don't remember the very moment that I read through this report, but I had never been discouraged or felt like I was gonna get in trouble with my parents because I got a few Cs and maybe even an occasional D. I never had that feeling at all, never ever.

I always knew I was more than a letter grade. I knew my worth and still do. I knew that my value wasn't tied to a report card.

I knew who I was then and I know who I am now.

Romans 837, I know that I'm more than a conqueror. I knew then and I know now that I am an overcomer. You know, I remember in my first year of college, my algebra teacher, he asked me, you know, what's your major?

And I said Spanish. And then his next question was, can you believe this, check this out? His next question was, do you wanna starve?

Basically saying, hey, like, you're not gonna make a living from that. Like, what are you thinking?

Well, dear instructor, I think you'd be thrilled, absolutely thrilled to know that I haven't starved yet.

And in fact, yes, thanks to earning a bachelor's in Spanish, it has opened up many doors for me from a professional standpoint. And furthermore, thankfully, so far I've been blessed with enough resources to be able to feed those who were on the brink of starvation. Yes, friends, I knew then, and I still know now, Philippians 4:13, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Yeah, was never a straight A student, but I know I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

I didn't even make the honor roll in high school.

I wasn't even allowed, and not just me, but other students who were in my GPA category.

We weren't even allowed to set foot in the computer lab because our GPA wasn't high enough.

Can you believe that?

That was life.

These days, I mean, you got like four year olds playing with computers.

I thank God for the village that surrounded me, my parents, siblings, family, who believed in my potential to succeed.

And those teachers who also knew that I had a bright future ahead. And I'm expecting even greater things down the road. I think the best is still yet to come.

Hey, I'm gonna ask one favor of you.

Share this episode, as well as episodes nine and 10, I would say, with a student or teacher you know.

I know they need to hear this, whether they're in high school, college, or the graduate school setting.

They absolutely need to hear this.

And when they listen to these episodes, and when they get to work, and when they start implementing these strategies, and they start seeing the changes, and they start feeling differently about studying, about learnings, write me a review on Apple Podcasts, and let me know the good news. Catch you next week.

Blessings.