One of the hardest part about teaching is this: you can’t choose when.
You can’t choose when the big, overarching lessons are going to get learned.
You can offer all of the tools, you can give lectures, one-on-one feedback, cajole, criticize, praise, and teach your heart out. You can accelerate specific lessons through attention or intensity, but to the detriment of other lessons you want to teach.
So in the end, those big lessons sink in on their own timeline.
You can’t choose when, so when they do sink in, you celebrate.
(I could go on at length here about standardized tests, and curricula that require performance on a specific date, and lock-step education in general, but I won’t. Let’s leave it at this. When your students learn, you celebrate. Even if it’s after the test. Even if it’s after the performance. Because it might be too late to make a difference on the test, but it’s never too late to make a difference in their life.)