The Things You Can Read: Food For Thought: Teaching Life Lessons

The Things You Can Read welcomes you and thanks you for your readership. We, here at The Things You Can Read, ask your help, if you visit our site regularly, please follow us either via email or Google Friend Connect. Launched on June 7, 2012, our site has already attracted a great deal of attention. One of the goals of the site is to feature reviews of Children's Picture Books, Young Adult novels and Adult Literary Fiction/Nonfiction. A second goal for the blog is to be a resource for teachers of English and writing--with examples of student created writing, writing tips, resource links, and the opportunity to pick the brain of a seasoned English teacher. To spice things up...every now and then, we'll also include random quotes and thoughts on education and life in general, but our ultimate goal is to reach out into the blogosphere and be a "Book Whisperer" and "Writing Whisperer" to children and adults of all ages. Thank you for your readership. Here is to a lifetime filled with reading and writing.

Saturday, February 16, 2013

Food For Thought: Teaching Life Lessons

We had an inspirational speaker come to our middle school on Friday. If you are a teacher, we can hear the groans...and we also can feel your pain, because an assembly in the middle of the day can often wreck havoc on the normalcy needed to have a successful school day, but that was not the case on Friday.

Our speaker was not teaching "state testing material", but rather "life lesson material", and our only wish was that more people could have heard him. We know that what he said will stick with those that heard him for days, weeks, months, and possibly, years to come. He made us go UMMM a number of times during his talk. How do we know he connected with the students? Well, here is how, we had several children ask us the question the speaker zeroed in on after the assembly was over, which was "Who are you?" We have never had this kind of response before from a speaker, and we were proud to have an answer that sprang to our lips that we were pleased to share with them, and we were doubly pleased to be able to ask them the same question back...it was a very "teachable moment."

Our students may not remember what we coverd in English on Friday, February 15, 2013, but they will remember our speaker. We are definitely going to share the two key points that were made during the assembly: LOVE is a VERB, and "Know who you are so you can kill who you are NOT" with our own children. So, instead of saying, "I LOVE YOU!" next time try saying, "I VERB YOU!"

Additional Thoughts:

Love is a verb! It’s an action requiring your involvement your active participation. You cannot sit back and expect the world will serve it to you. Nor do you have to like every action of someone who you love or loves you. You cannot expect that your relationship will continue to provide love while you’re not putting in any effort. Love has to be earned and must be continually fought for. Here is to treating LOVE as a VERB!

Have a restful weekend and let us know...Who are you? We are a MOTHER, WIFE, and TEACHER!