Dusty Bibles

My wife is a prayer warrior with her feet firmly planted.  I am convinced that when she hops out of bed in the morning, the Devil says, “Oh crap, she’s up!” I believe this is a direct correlate of where she gives her attention.  People give attention to others in four ways:  casual attention, inconsistent attention, no attention whatsoever, and diligent attention.  It is that latter one that makes the difference.  How much attention she gives to the One who made her shows up in so many ways about her.  The Devil is not afraid of those with dusty Bibles.  Not at all.  They are of no danger to his plans.  Not the case with my wife.  Her Bibles are well-worn and read daily.  She shows good fruit every single day and I am one lucky man to have her as my wife.  She is armed and dangerous and uses the most high-yield resource ever written to impact lives.  I write this to make a point in the following paragraph.  Plus, I am still smitten after 36 years and I like to talk about her.

If you had to categorize your teaching tools as to which are dusty and which are well-worn, what would your list look like?  Which strategies do you give casual attention to?  Which ones do you give inconsistent attention to?  Which ones, even though you know that they are high-yield, do you give no attention to at all?  None of these levels of attention will get you what you want; assuming that you want your students to grow high and to the right.  As I have been trying to emphasize in the Marzano study and during our “Digging Deeper” session, the greatest impact on student achievement is the teacher’s appropriate use of high-yield strategies.  If those strategies have dust on them, I encourage you to get them out and reflect on how you can use them in your classroom. You need to give them diligent attention. You have to take what works and make it work.  If the material that you are receiving is just a table adornment or just something in the file, then that’s all it will ever be.  Never before has there been so much out there to pull from to make your teaching experience a successful one. You just have to go and there and get it.  Put your diligent attention to improving “The Art of Teaching” and it will come back to you multiple-fold.  We are here to make a difference and the appropriate use of highly effective strategies used by highly effective teachers results in highly effective kids.  That equation should never have dust on it.  

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Mary and I are heading to Butler on Saturday for Homecoming and many trips down memory lane.  Also, we will attend the Browns game on Sunday as they play the Colts in the “Oil Can”. We will not be the only ones in the stands wearing orange and brown. I do hope that the Colts run out of “luck”.

Your Two Most Important Days

Samuel Clemens, better known to most as Mark Twain, was born in 1835.  He grew up in the state of Mississippi.  (side note:  did you ever notice how any kid can spell that word, but ask them to spell a simple pronoun and an adventure begins?)  Anyway, Mark Twain spent the majority of his life in M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I where he authored 28 books.  He was called “The first truly American writer” by William Faulkner, a huge compliment to say the least.  Mark Twain’s (no relation to Shania) most notable books were “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer”, written in 1876 and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn”, written in 1885.  These two books were probably required reading as you went through school.  Twain was also famous for his humorous quotes.  He described college as “a place where professor lecture notes go straight to the students lecture notes without passing through the brains of either.”  Perhaps he was on to lectures not having a huge effect size in student learning.  My focus today is on another Twain quote which centered on the two most important days of one’s life.  If you think on that for a minute, many things may come to mind.  Maybe the day you were married, the birth of your children, the day you proposed, getting baptized, landing your first job, buying your first home, seeing the Browns actually win a game…  The list is special to you for many reasons.  However, Mark Twain summed it up this way:  “The two most important days of your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”  That is what I want to focus on. 

“Why” you were born is a really intriguing thought. Seriously, that is a deep thought. How about “why” you decided to become a teacher?  Is there any correlation to why you were born? Teaching is really a calling; at least that is what I believe.  Teaching isn’t for everyone.  Working with kids is not for everyone.  Working in a school is not for everyone.  What is it that drives you to do this for at least 180 days a year?  If the starting pay was $172,000 per year, would that attract more people?  It probably would, but maybe not the right people.  You see, just because someone is “smart” doesn’t necessarily make them a good teacher of anything.  There is both an art and science to this business.    Why were you put here?  What is the purpose that you are to fulfill?  Is this really what you are supposed to be doing? Do you really enjoy what you do?  Do most of your days seem like bad days?  What if I switched careers at this stage?   Trust me, there is more to life than just living and dying and what happens in that hyphen between those two dates is what defines you. If you have found your purpose by teaching and you know that you are making a positive difference each and every day, then I encourage you to keep running the race that was set for you.  Bloom where you are planted.  Know that you are serving a greater cause.  You’re not making widgets; you are developing people.  If this is truly what you were called to do, then leave it better than you found it.  Make the most of every opportunity.  Make a difference every single day.

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 The Browns play at home vs the Bengals in round two of “The Battle of Ohio.”  0-5 is about as much fun as a Tupperware party.

Bringing in the Harvest

About this time of the year, when the moisture content is just right, the farmers start to bring in their harvest of soybeans.  If you have never watched a combine moving over the field separating the seed from the chaff, well, you’ve missed out on a spectacle.  Maybe I am in the minority, but I really enjoy seeing this done.  As I passed a field on the way home the other day, I again was treated to a farmer bringing in his harvest.   I pulled my truck over and just watched for a while as the sun began to set.  The crop dust flying as the combine churned and spit the seeds in the hopper.  Then it hit me – this man put a lot of time into tilling, planting, fertilizing, and praying for just the right amount of rain long before he got on that combine. You reap what you sow.  That is, unless you have one of the worst droughts in history as we did this past summer.  Remember those multiple 100 degree+ days?  One day was so hot I saw two trees fighting over a dog.  But I digress.   Despite all his prior work, the harvest doesn’t happen on its own.  Nope, you have to bring in the harvest.  It doesn’t come to you.  You have to go out and get it. 

Throughout the school year, you have been and will continue to sow into a lot of kids.  Our harvest will come, but like the farmer, we will have to go out and get it.  It will not happen automatically.  We must plant seeds of expectation and learning along the way.  We must provide the right climate in the classroom.  We must be sharp to teach them to be sharp.  We must plow our way through even when you don’t feel much like taking the reins.  We must cast aside all that may entangle us and run the race set before us.  We all want a good harvest.  You want your kids to get smarter about the objectives.  You want your kids to pass the ISTEP.  You want your kids to move to Pass+ status.  You want your kids to move from a red dot to a yellow dot and from a yellow dot to a green dot.  Guess what?  None of that happens on its own.  If it did, there would be no reason for any of us to be here. We put a great deal into this long before the ISTEP harvest. We can make the difference.  Like the harvest, we have to go out and get it.  

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The Browns play the New York Giants on Sunday.  Why are they called the “New York” Giants if they actually play in New Jersey?  It’s kind of like walking through a Sears store and wondering what they did with Roebuck.