Extend the Life of Your Vehicle

I am rarely asked to be the driver for any group trip.  When I was a new driver about 40 years ago, my friends insisted that I did not drive.  There are people decades older than me who insist that I not drive them anywhere.  This is not because I am a horrid driver who cannot seem to keep it between the lane lines. It is not because I take chances and consider driving to be an offensive show of will. It is not because I play the game of chicken while visualizing that I am driving in Hanoi where there are no traffic lights or stop signs. I do not drive recklessly.  In fact, I have never had a traffic ticket. So, why do people shy away from riding shotgun with me? The answer is simple:  I drive slowly. In multiple decades of driving, I have been given the one finger salute too many times to count.  One of my best friends says that I can be passed by erosion.  AARP tells me to speed it up.  Recently, I read an article about preserving the life of your vehicle.  The mechanic who wrote the article listed five ways to make your vehicle last longer.  These included regular service inspections, keeping your tires properly inflated, replacing your timing belt every 60,000 miles, and maintaining your vehicle’s exterior.  All these were great advice.  However, the number one way to make your vehicle last longer was to SLOW DOWN!  Yep, I feel vindicated!  The difference between driving 50 miles per hour and 70 miles per hour is that your vehicle is working twice as hard because the drag caused by the wind has to be overcome at twice the rate.  So, the next time you are following people like me, lay off the horn, put your finger down, and take notice that the car in front of you will be around for a long time.

In education, we sometimes get too bogged down in how fast things happen.  We get the feeling that we “have to finish the book” before the school year ends or some sort of cardinal sin has occurred and the line for the confessional is going to be long. Education isn’t just about breath of material, it necessitates depth of material.  Deeper levels of understanding need to take place.  Knowledge and comprehension are fine, but what needs to be embraced is movement toward achieving at levels of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  That is critical thinking. There is nothing biblical about any of our textbooks.  They do not hold the answers to the world’s problems; those problems seem to be increasing.  The textbook that you use in your classroom is only a resource.  It is only one of many resources that are available for you to use to help kids deepen their understanding of what you have deemed to be essential in their education.  I watched a 5^th grade teacher this weekend teach his kids about the Civil War by having them participate in a mock battle complete with the correct colors.  That is not in the book.  It’s okay to get out of the book.  It’s okay to get kids out of their seats.  It’s okay to get kids to use all of their senses to understand something.  The textbook is only a resource.  I have heard one of our teachers say multiple times, “Here’s something that your textbook won’t tell you, but I will.”  You don’t have to race to finish a textbook. Find ways and resources to get your kids to the highest levels of understanding.  Plan carefully to make the product last; in this case, an education where retention and transfer of material is the highest value.