What It's Really About

A few weeks ago I was at church and listening to the Pastor talk about being a servant.  It was the weekend following Easter, so it was not a surprise to hear about extending your faith from passive to active.

The Pastor talked quite a lot about how people in The Church can often times miss the point.  He said, "You can ruin a church by making it activity-oriented instead of Jesus-oriented" and it reminded me of the most profound thing that I learned during my time teaching at the high school level.

I remember sitting in a meeting with my Department Chair, my student teacher, and my student teacher's advisers.  You see, my Department Chair and myself were co-cooperating teachers.  As we sat in this meeting we were discussing the use of activities in the classroom.  He said:

When you wake up in the morning and are thinking about your day,
 are you thinking about the activities you will be doing in class?  

If so, you're missing the point.

Of course what he meant was, we need to be thinking about what our students will be learning.  That needs to be our focus.  The exciting activities we use or cool technology we have implemented means absolutely nothing if we have not really focused on our learning outcomes for the day.

So my question to you is: 

what do you think about when you wake up in the morning?  

It's important to remind ourselves of the purpose of education and why we are teaching who and what we are teaching.  Let's remember to focus on what it's really about in the classroom... our students, their development, and their learning.

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