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.  

----------------------------------------------

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”.