Chapter 5

He was excited to finally be able to start teaching the GED classes this year, but unfortunately, his first night teaching adults had not gone as well as he’d hoped. Maybe he was na?ve, but he’d honestly gone into it thinking he could make a difference. After last night, though, he was pretty sure some of them wouldn’t show up for the second class, and he hated being pessimistic. He was usually a glass-half-full kind of guy.

Out of the dozen students, three had said they didn’t really care if they earned their GED—but he knew that could have been a defensive mentality. Often, those who had failed at things assumed they would fail again, thus setting themselves up for failure. It was a vicious cycle that was hard to break, which was why some people went into things expecting to fail. If you don’t set high expectations, it hurt less when you’re defeated, at least in theory.