Sunday, August 28, 2011

Dare 2: Love is Kind

"She opens her mouth in wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue"
Proverbs 31:26

Dare 2: Love is Kind 

Practicing patience helps to avoid negative situations, whereas practicing kindness helps creates positive situations. 
"Love makes you kind.  And kindness makes you likable. When you're kind, people want to be around you.  They see you as being good to them and good for them."  

"Do not let kindness and truth leave you;  bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.  So you will find favor and repute in the eyes of God and man."   Proverbs 3:3-4

So, what does it mean to practice kindness on our kiddos?  The book has broken the term into four separate ideas.  

1.  Gentleness.  First let's think about what gentleness is not... It is not harsh, bitter, argumentative, careless, impatient, irritable, insensitive, and maybe this is important for some to hear: gentleness is not weakness.  In fact, The Full Life Study Bible defines gentleness as restraint coupled with strength and courage.  I think gentleness with our students simply means being careful how we treat them (even the roughest piece of sandpaper in your class!).  When we have to discipline our students, gentleness means making the discipline as easy to hear as possible.  I really liked my friends idea of having an "Australia"
 corner in her classroom--where she sends a student to chill out and have a second to think about what's happening before any discipline occurs.  

2.  Helpfulness. The idea of being helpful is to meet the needs of the moment. What needs do your student need met?  Let's think beyond Bloom here for a moment... and maybe go a little more simple.  Many of my students need help getting organized, an extra bit of attention, or a little eye contact to help them remember to do the right thing.  Many times their greater needs are completely out of our hands.  Let's not forget that we can still be helpful in the small instances. 

3.  Willingness.   Willingness to listen, to offer our time, to offer our insight, and to help them in any way possible. 

4.  Initiative. Taking initiative means we greet our kids first, smile fist, serve first and forgive first.  

Jesus gave us a perfect picture of kindness in the story of the Good Samaritan.  A Jewish man is attacked by robbers and left for dead on the side of the road.  Two religious leaders pass by and do not stop--too good for such a lowly man.  But another man, a Samaritan--who culturally does not get along with Jews (understatement)--stops and takes care of all of the man's needs.  This act of kindness brought two enemies together. 
 

"Love determines to show thoughtful actions, even when there is no reward.  You will never learn to love until you learn to demonstrate kindness."  

This Week's Dare

In addition to saying nothing negative (patience) to your students this week,  do at least one unexpected gesture as an act of kindness.  

Try to reach as many students as possible.  And remember, as with patience, kindness and gentleness are fruits of the Spirit.  If you've already got the Spirit inside of you, tap into the gifts He's given.  :) 

Praying you have a blessed week.  

Kendrick, S, & Kendrick, A. (2008). The Love Dare. Nashville: B & H Publishing Group.  

Sunday, August 21, 2011

Dare 1: Love is Patient

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13

Dare 1: Love is Patient
 
Be completely humble and gentle; be patient bearing with one another in love.  
Ephesians 4:2

Everyone, whether they like to admit it or not, has a deep rooted desire for love.  Love changes things.  It always does what is best for others and empowers us to face our greatest problems.  Love makes relationships meaningful.  Love makes life meaningful. 

So many of our students have not been offered love—and perhaps some of you haven’t either.  A very wise man told me once that when you are longing for something, the easiest way to receive that something is to give it.  So, our goal for this year is to give love.   I know God will show up in BIG ways when we follow His commandment to love.  Our students will be blessed… and we will be blessed. 

“Love is built on two pillars that best define what it is.  Those pillars are patience and kindness.   All other characteristics of love are extensions of these two attributes.  And that’s where your dare will begin.  With patience.” 


Part of me wants to run away screaming at the thought of practicing PATIENCE with some of my students!  I hear myself saying, “It’s just not possible!  This kid is so __________.”  I’ve adopted the term “sandpaper kids” to refer to those not-so-easy-to-love students.  They are smoothing out my imperfections through a very uncomfortable process. 

Loving those students will inspire you to be a more patient teacher.  You will begin to respond to negative situations in positive ways.  It will provide a calm in the midst of the storm our classrooms can sometimes become.  Perhaps you will even find ways to extend mercy (not giving something that they deserve; a disposition to be kind and forgiving)  to your students. 

Reacting out of anger will never make a situation better.  You may win in the moment, but what have you done to that child?  Anger typically will stir up new issues, while patience will put a stop to them.  “It is a choice to control your emotions rather than allowing your emotions to control you, and shows discretion instead of returning evil for evil.” 

“Patience stands in the doorway where anger is clawing to burst in, but waits to see the whole picture before passing judgment.”   How often do we truly get the opportunity to see the whole picture of our students’ lives?  How often do you take their lives outside of school into perspective before reacting to their poor behavior?  Please don’t mistake me here; I believe whole-heartedly that students need to be disciplined.  Disciplined, not punished.  Perhaps this is where we need to take a step out of our busy days and attempt to understand where our students are coming from. 

Patience will not come naturally.  Often times when you are praying for patience, that is when your patience is most tested.  For those of you who have accepted Christ, remember that we already have His patience inside us.  Patience is a fruit of the Spirit—tap into it! 

This Week’s Dare
 
The way we treat our students and the things we say may very well be a reflection of the condition of our heart.  For the next week, resolve to practice patience with your students.  The best way to pay attention to this is to check what we say to them... and when and if you feel your impatience building, take a step back and breathe, then respond.  What’s the rule we always teach them?  If you can’t say anything nice… don’t say anything at all!


A couple things to keep in mind...
- It may be a while before you see changes in your students—so start the change with yourself
- Your coworkers need love (and patience!), too!

Praying that God will bless us all with patience.   
<3


Kendrick, S, & Kendrick, A. (2008). The Love Dare. Nashville: B & H Publishing Group.

Monday, August 15, 2011

A Fresh Start

Well, I kind of made it last year! For those of you that journeyed with me, thank you, and I'm sorry I didn't finish.  Life gets busy and it sort of became an out of sight, out of mind kind of thing...unfortunately.  

I honestly wasn't really planning on starting it back up again.  Satan has a way of taking a good thing and threading lies through it.  I'll be completely honest with you, not many people commented on my posts and I sort of felt like I was doing it for nothing.  Should have realized Satan's schemes quicker.  I've been very surprised by the number of people who have mentioned the blog recently and asked me if I was planning on doing it again.  I think that's God's way of telling me I should reconsider.  

So, here I am.  School is beginning and there's no better time to pick this back up.  I'll revamp the dares I redid last year and begin working on the new dares.  But I will need your help!  The Love Dare book offers all kinds of great dares for married couples, but let's be honest, that kind of love does not always apply to our students.  So, I'll need you to help me out with dares that you think are applicable to teachers... what do you think we need to work on the most?  

A Quick Refresher...
This is taken from my very first post on this blog, just about a year ago.  I went back to it to remind myself what my initial goal was...

You quickly realize when you are teacher that the one thing above everything else that your students need is love. Many students practically cry out for it on a daily basis. And they all have different reasons. I've found that many of my students do not receive the love they deserve at home--which I'm sure is the case for many teachers these days. Even the ones who do receive adequate love desire to feel accepted and a sense of belonging. What better way to care for our students than to love them?....
I'm going to go along with the "Love Dare" book and tweak it to fit the needs of a teacher attempting to love those sometimes-not-so-lovable students (as well as those that are just easy to love!). My hope is to have fellow teachers post about how they are carrying out each week's dare with their students  {being careful not to breach confidentiality!} I love to learn from my fellow teachers! ...
This is my warning that although I may be an English teacher, I will not always compose my sentences correctly, and I will probably get caught up in what I'm saying and forget to add punctuation and do a lot of "dot dot dot" and use some sort of improper English...forgive me.

The goal is simply to love.

Will you join me?

 

First dare will be up this weekend.  Hope the year is starting off well!! God Bless!  

<3