A morning walk with John Bytheway...

As many of you know, I have started walking, jogging, running every morning. I keep track of my time and miles with my iPod. Today I decided to listen to a talk by John Bytheway entitled "Be Thou An Example of the Believers." I decided I would walk until he was done talking, so I took a different course than I usually do in order to make time for the 55 minute talk. It is a really good talk and I recommend it to everyone and I will let you borrow it if you want. (I have it on CD, too.)

Anyways... Here is what stood out to me...

He talks specifically about this scripture and goes into some deeper meanings...

Here is the scripture...

1st Timothy 4:12... "Let no man despise thy youth; but be thou an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity."

When talking about the phrase "Let no man despise thy youth", he brings up a primary song that most of us should know, "Give", said the Little Stream"... He refers to a line in the first verse that says...

"I'm small, I know, but wherever I go the grass grows greener still."

He goes on to say that the stream shows a little humility by saying that it is small. (I also thought that maybe the stream may have been feeling a little inadequate. As many of us do from time to time.)

And then comes the "but".

And it's a really big "BUT" in my opinion... "Wherever I go the grass grows greener still."

So... The stream knows it is small, but it also knows that it can have a huge impact on the world that is travels through.

Now there was a lot more to the talk, but this really stuck with me the whole walk and I wanted to add my perspective...

Each of us (young, old, in-between) has things that we struggle with... that help us to be humble. Each of us KNOWS that we have these inadequacies within us that maybe no one else knows about. We are all like the Little Stream in one way or another. We are all "small" and we all "know"...

And then comes the "but"... That wonderfully, AWESOME "but"...

Wherever WE go "the grass grows greener still"... We have all been given something special from our Heavenly Father... A little piece of AWESOME... And we can take that AWESOME and use it to overcome our inadequacies for the betterment of the world around us. There is great potential in all of us. No matter how small or insignificant we may feel. Remember what Alma taught his son, Helaman... "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass." (Alma 37: 6)

So... Find and embrace your AWESOME (whatever it is) so that wherever you go "the grass grows greener still."

Have an AWESOME day...

Summer Fun

So... Summer vacation this year has been interesting in our house. We have had some theme weeks to keep the kids entertained. I think my wife and I should be up for Parents of the Year... Just sayin'...

 

 

 

So far it has been fun...

Have some AWESOME fun with your family this Summer...

 

Rules of Life... (For Me Anyways...)

Got this idea from another Blogger that I found while lost in the Twitterverse... In no particular order...

1) Be nice to everyone even if they aren't nice to you.

2) Love deeply... It's the only way to go...

3) Pray... Always...

4) Go to Church.

5) Read the scriptures... Daily... (It really helps)

6) Exercise... It's good for the soul...

7) Take your Wife out once in a while... (Or husband, or girlfriend, or boyfriend)

8) Continue learning after you are done with your "formal" education.

9) Read... A lot...

10) Go outside...

11) Love your job...

12) Cuddle with your kids....

13) Eat whatever you want once in a while... It is good to indulge sometimes, just not all the time.

14) Make a difference to someone else every day...

15) Eat Reese's Peanut Butter Cups because they are sooooooo good...

16) Spend time with family and friends. Doesn't matter what you do.

17) Follow your dreams wherever they take you...

18) Do something nice for someone else... Every day... Doesn't have to be a BIG thing...

19) Happiness is a journey. Not a destination.

20) Always be AWESOME sauce... Never Ketchup sweat... (Or Mustard pee)

A Few AWESOME Things From This School Year...

This school year brought some great things...

1) AVID... Not gonna lie... There were some ups and downs, but I think it all came out good in the end... It is helping me come out of my shell and into the world outside my classroom...

2) Twitter... Got into that whole craziness... It has been super helpful with finding out new things and checking up on kids that need the extra care. I am not the most interesting "tweeter", but it is fun to interact with everyone.

3) Discovering that I had an opinion on school policies even if no one important listened or did anything about it. I think that after 7 years I have finally begun to understand what education really is and what it needs to be. I have also come to understand that our campus needs some work and that I can't just sit back and "hope" someone will do something about it. If I think we need to change things, then maybe I should get out there and be a voice.

4) Discovering that others believed that I had something to offer. In the past, most people on campus never paid much attention to me. This year seems to have been the year when others have started to ask me for my opinion or advice on things. Not a lot of people, but the right people. It feels good to know that others recognize that I might have something good to offer.

5) My students... Both those that were actually in my class and those that I got to hang out with and get to know better... They are truly AWESOME and have been a positive influence on me this year...

It has been a good year of growth for me and I am looking forward to next year and the surprises that it will bring....

Stay AWESOME everyone...

Teachers and Storytellers

“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.” ---Brandon Sanderson

This came from a book I have been reading entitled The Way of Kings. Obviously by Brandon Sanderson. It is a fantasy novel and I am on my second read for this book. It is pretty amazing what you find on the second read that you completely missed on the first read.

This quote is one of those little gems that presented itself. There have been others, but this one stood out and really got me thinking. What if we changed just one word?

What if we changed the word "storyteller" to "teacher"?

Being an educator, this really got me thinking about what we demand from our students. Do we want them to be able to think and feel and react to the world around them in positive and beneficial ways or do we want them to get high scores on their tests so that our school "looks" good?

I have found that those who do the latter are not preparing kids to be useful people and citizens of the World. Have I been guilty of this in my short time as a teacher? Probably yes. Is it all that I have done? Absolutely not. I try really hard to not fall into the trap of "getting high scores". High test scores cannot be the final goal of education. It doesn't help the kids and it doesn't help the World.

I want my kids to think and feel and react appropriately. I try to give them opportunities to do these things each day and I know that I am not successful every day with every kid. But I am trying. I can't open up a kids head and pour in the knowledge and experience my short 35 years have given me. I just can't. It's not fair to me as a teacher, but it's also not fair to them as my students. They need to do it themselves. They need to fail once in a while so that they know what success really feels like. They need to understand that they have within them the potential to do great things, AWESOME things, without having to be told what to do every step of the way. They CAN do it, if they BELIEVE that they can.

I have learned that telling them "how to think" doesn't work out the way we think it will. I hope that I can be that teacher/storyteller that gives them "questions to think upon" and I hope that they realize that I did them a favor by doing so.

Stay AWESOME everyone...

The Way Things Are Measured

Three day weekend got me thinking about some things...

First, I thought about how I have defined friends in my life. I have many, many, MANY awesome friends in my life. They are wonderful people and help me to overcome a lot of challenges. Some of them I see more often than others and some of them I only see on social media because they live so dang far away. Still, these people have been an integral part of my development as a person and I am truly grateful for what they do for me.

It occurred to me this weekend that the QUANTITY of time spent with my friends is not as important as the QUALITY of time we spend. I have always had this thought itching at the back of my mind that if I am not hanging out with my friends consistantly on a daily or weekly basis, then that means they are upset with me or that they don't want to be friends. I know that it sounds stupid, but it just nags at me for some reason. (I have to get out of my head sometimes. It's crazy in there.) I realized that even though we don't get to spend a lot of time together, that doesn't mean that we aren't close friends and that we aren't important to each other. It just means that we are busy with the everyday challenges of life that overwhelm us. When we do get together, it is truly AWESOME and we have so much fun.

Case in point... This very weekend, we were able to get together with a family that we consider our Best Friends. I will call them the "Besties". They are the same age as we are. (Literally... The wife is a few months older than me and the husband is a few months younger than The Pretty One...) They have 6 kids between them. It is a His, Hers, and Theirs kind of family. The two older kids don't live at home with them, and the four younger are around the ages of our kids, so everyone gets along and we have so much fun together. Anyways... We hadn't been able to hang out with each other for at least a month. (It might have been longer). We went over for a birthday party for the oldest child who was visiting from Seattle. We were only there for about an hour and a half, but it was AWESOME to be with our friends and just hang out and have fun.

So... QUALITY is much more important than QUANTITY... Remember that...

Second realization.... Just because someone doesn't want to spend time with me or get to know me doesn't mean that I am a bad person or not worth knowing.

There are people that I come into contact with on a regular basis that I respect and that I think are successful in some way. I would like to know these people a little better, but they don't have the same desire to know me. I often wonder if there is something wrong with me. I ask myself, "Why don't they like me?" or "What have I done to make them not want to be friends?" It is silly. It doesn't really matter what they think of me or why they think that. What matters is that I am comfortable with who I am and am capable of doing good things. I can still learn from these people, but it will always feel awkward to be with them.

So... I don't HAVE to be friends with EVERYBODY in order to learn from them.

Third realization... (Last one, I promise)... I can't measure the amount of success I have by the amount of success other people have.

I look around campus and see the teachers that the students really like or look up to. I see people that influence students so much that they get mentioned in graduation speeches. I see people that the administration asks to do things ALL the time while everyone else doesn't get the opportunity to participate. I see these people and wonder why I am not one of them. Why am I not popular and cool like they are?

And then I think, why do I need to be one of these people? Why is it important? It really isn't that important. I don't need to be popular and cool to be successful in my career. I have my own little sphere of influence on campus. I don't come out of my classroom much because I am needed there. There are kids that come to my room because they know it is a safe place to be themselves without the criticism and judgements of others. I do what I can to help those kids that want MY help. Maybe I am not graduation speech worthy, or in with the popular kids, or in the in-crowd with administration (sad that that even exists). But it doesn't matter. I am doing the very best that I know how and I have been successful with a LOT of kids in my short 7 year tenure as a teacher. They weren't necessarily the popular and cool kids, but they were AWESOME in their own ways and I am grateful for the opportunity to have helped them to overcome difficulties in their lives.

So... Don't measure your success by someone else's scale.... Make your own scale...

Have an AWESOME day...

Happy Valentine's Day

To The Pretty One... She will probably kill me for posting these.... Lol...

Best day..... EVER....

We are so cute...

Still cute....

Getting older.... But still cute...

 

12 years later... Still cute...

It's been an AWESOME ride.... I love her with all that I am...