What Was I Thinking?

How is it that despite everything I have not done as well as I could have, students still manage to turn out alright in the end? I suppose this is what parents think about their children from time to time. I cannot speak from personal experience about that, but I do know that as an educator, I discover that there have been things that I have been doing for years in the classroom which have not been the best practices of a master teacher; and I realize my shortcomings and areas where I could certainly stand to improve and grow and think, "Lord, how is it that I have managed to survive this long as an educator when there have been so many things I just did not know?" I figure that by the time I retire, I will know almost everything I need to know to be a great teacher, but by then I will no longer be teaching. I wonder if my parents ever thought that about themselves? Have they ever thought, "Now that I have finally figured out how to be an effective parent, my last child ...

It is a little after three o'clock in the afternoon and I am covering the front desk while Mr. McFarland and Mrs. Lynch deal with other details of school and personal life and Mrs. Lange cooks up a spaghetti dinner. I am glad for the opportunity to sit for a while and rest, because I am TIRED!   The first day of school, no matter how long it is - half-day or full-day - is exhausting. As tired as I was last night when I slid between the sheets of my bed, it was difficult to fall asleep. I rolled over. And over. And over again, as thoughts of various students, families, and details of the first day floated up to the surface of my consciousness despite my best efforts to push them down into the murky depths of my mind so that I could sleep. Somewhere in the night, I dozed off. I had an incredibly vivid dream of being in a classroom witnessing a lesson, something very amazing was going on and I was looking forward with great anticipation to what the teacher was about to do - And then t...

I have put this off long enough. The students are now home for the summer and the teachers have completed their last day of school for this year too. All that is left to do is send home report cards and take care of some other administrative details and the 2009-2010 school year will be history. It was a very good year, if I do say so myself. As much as we all look forward to the end of school ("The end of a matter is better than its beginning," says Ecclesiastes 7:8), the end is also bittersweet. Toward the end of school, the students lingered, signing each other's yearbooks, somewhat reluctant to go home. Today, teachers dropped by the school office at the end of the day to say good-bye, and though each has earned a long, well-deserved rest, those of us who remain to work in the school office this summer will miss being with our friends and colleagues on a near daily basis. We do love each other. These past two days, we have had the opportunity to spend some time with P...

The End Is Near. I remember seeing cartoons of a man with long hair and a beard, dressed in a monk's habit with a rope belt and sandals, holding a stick with a sign on it that said just that - The End Is Near or Repent! The End Is Near. I am sitting in my office on this Saturday morning after the MBC&S graduation breakfast as I type these words, and I am clean-shaven, my hair is still short from last week's trip to my sister-in-law's hair salon, and I am wearing new black shoes, a white oxford shirt, and the paints from the black suit I bought last night - my first black suit in all my 48 years on this earth and my first suit in about ten years. I don't fit the image of the scruffy, sign toting hermit, but I am here to proclaim that the End is near. After this Memorial Day weekend, there will be seven more days with the students here at GGCA, and two of those will be half-days.   Between now and the End there will be the high school graduation where thirteen of GGCA...

So, what's new? If Solomon is to be believed, nothing, nothing at all. But what have I been doing? Well, I have been working on the rocks in my jar lately. Are you mystified by this statement? If you read one of my older blogs, this will make better sense.   I attended a two-day conference on curriculum mapping to learn how to get started committing our K through 12 curriculum to an online document that will enable us to see any gaps and redundancies in our present curriculum. I think we have even found the web-based program we will use to do this, and I plan to send someone to a conference this summer to learn how to use it. That may not mean much to you, but it gives me a few tingles of excitement. It feels good to accomplish something, doesn't it? I am a linear kind of guy, meaning that I like to know what has to be done and go down the list and check off items as they are completed. I like to put together Ikea furniture, if that gives you a better idea of what I am trying t...

I never thought about teaching so much when I was starting out as a teacher. I just did it, or I thought I did. There were times when I thought I was a good teacher doing the right things the right way, but other times I felt I a pretty crummy teacher, because nothing seemed to be going right for me. My first year of teaching was filled with self-condemnation.   At the end of a long day, I would pour out my woes to the English teacher and she would speak light into my darkness and give me hope that tomorrow things would get better. She did not let me quit. She pointed out my mistakes, but she pointed out my successes too. Day after day, I came to school as the high school math and history teacher and did my best, which wasn't much, but was better than nothing, and I probably failed more than I succeeded. I know her words of encouragement kept me going.   I think the fact that I had moved all the way to Baltimore, Maryland from Portland, Maine also played into my "try, try agai...

Pastor Lange likes to use the analogy of a jar, some rocks, some sand, and some water to illustrate how to prioritize. If someone wants all of the elements to fit into the jar, the rocks must go in first - the sand and water will fill the remainder of the space. The task is to identify the rocks - the big things that must be done - and make sure they are given priority over the smaller details which will manage to find their place in the grand scheme of things. I was reminded of this analogy a couple of days ago and it challenged me to think about what are the rocks in the GGCA school improvement plan. I have identified two big rocks that I hope to focus upon in the coming years: literacy and guaranteed, viable curriculum.   Literacy is not just the ability to read, write, and speak, but the ability to listen, think, and discern. This world needs Christian believers who can communicate, who are understanding, knowledgeable, and compassionate, and who can stand for Truth. The world ...