Everyone can't be in your front row.

Everyone Can't Be in Your Front Row

Life is a theater - invite your audience carefully. Not everyone is holy enough and healthy enough to have a front row seat in our lives. There are some people in your life that need to be loved from a distance. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you let go, or at least minimize your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships/fellowships!

Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention to: Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of growth uphill and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people, do you feel better or feel worse? Which ones always have drama or don't really understand, know and appreciate you and the gift that lies within you?

The more you seek God and the things of God -- the more you seek quality, the more you seek not just the hand of God but the face of God-- the more you seek things honorable -- the more you seek growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you, the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the FRONT ROW and who should be moved to the balcony of your life. You cannot change the people around you...but you can change the people you are around! Ask God for wisdom and discernment and choose wisely the people who sit in the front row of your life.

Everyone can't be in your front row.

(author unknown)

Seeing the Future

I was reading a local blog when another teacher made a comment that people objected to. She said something about knowing her students are future felons. Non-teachers felt this was unfair.

Since coming to the school I teach in, I have made predictions (to myself) about future incarcerations. This year, one of them came true.

I never would have said anything to the boy at the time I taught him, but his arrest for felony assault and unlawful entry came as no surprise.

There are some from each year that I wait to read about in the paper.

One of the boys from my high school days, well liked, well raised, most likely to succeed type, spent 20 years in prison for murder. Some things are not predictable.

Nightmares and regrets

I failed 5 people this year. One really bothers me. Four didn't come to school - had they come, they probably would have passed because they would have been here to nag and get the work from them. But I saw them each about once the last month.

But the fifth was there every day. He was behaved, he was quiet, he was capable - he did no work.

I talked with him, I listened, I even wrote him a note. Nothing reached him. And he failed my class.

I have dreamed about him every night - but I wouldn't have done it any differently. If he had done SOMETHING, I would have curved the grade. But he either turned in nothing or a blank sheet with his name on it.

He would not even copy work placed in front of him.

Understand, he is capable of A work.

And I never figured out how to reach him.

Choices - make yours count

I have been thinking alot about my students lately, in part because of that group that totally annoyed me this week by acting stupid when I had a sub.

And I realize it all comes down to choices.

Part of what I always loved about math is the decision making/problem solving that you do. The kids want me to come up with review games. I think those are so stupid. I always wanted to learn the math for the math. They want to trash my room playing trashketball.

Here are some of the decisions they have made this week:
* three of my students will not finish the year because they are in jail. Drugs, assault, theft. Three others that I have taught in the past are there as well.

* Four students had projects taken off my desk (before they were graded) the day I had the sub. I know these kids - they do their work, get good grades, don't cheat. I believe they did it. I believe someone took it. Why would you not copy it and return the original?

* Some of the seniors have taken to wandering the halls, cussing. The cussing isn't new, the wandering is. They get a note to go to A and then don't.

* I give study guides and let them see my work after I have shared it with them. (I would prefer they do it, but I only get a couple in each class who will. I need to change that next year). Boy copies mine, but not entirely, then argues with me that the way he wrote it is the way I wrote it. Why not just copy the whole thing?

* I mentioned the girl who expected me to help her with another teacher's exam - then yelled at me "If you don't help me I will fail!" to which I replied "the time to ask for help is in class during the review not during the exam."

* Another girl was threatening that she was going to argue with each of her teachers at graduation because the school was so lame.

* One girl loudly accused me of messing with her grades because the average kept going down and "I do all my work" - her grades lately have been 2 to 15 points below her average. Obviously I taught her no math that she can't see that.

* I have kids I haven't seen in class in weeks. They come to school enough to not get dropped, but they are failing me. Yes, I am documenting conversations.

I don't get it.

I can feel my anger building and then I just want to teach younger grades again. Seniors - too late.