Archive for the ‘children’ category
November 22, 2020
They make me cringe and want to floss my teeth for no apparent reason. The extremist views of the right and the left are…well, extreme!
And popular! Not popular, because mega-number of people agree with them, but they attract attention because they are so “out there”. They are the political versions of The Real Housewives of Wherever, another cultural favorite that makes me run for the bathroom cabinet.
Being a moderate, I have to shake my head and go for a walk. And yet, as I think about it, extreme views and personalities are apparent in most areas and arenas of our world. Football players, and the whole offensive line, now make it an end zone production after a touchdown is scored. It seems like no one now scores and simply hands the football to the nearest official. Broadway has to make a showing. Speaking of Broadway, that brings back the memory of Joe Namath from the 60s and 70s, the quarterback whose nickname was Broadway Joe.
Even religion goes for the extremes, from Benny Hinn smacking people in the forehead to extreme conservative churches that frown on smiling.
In politics we’ve had the Moral Majority and the Tea Party and, on the other side, there’s the Progressive “Pack” and “The View”.
The thing is…those of us in the middle are very uncomfortable with the extreme views in just about any area. We don’t frequent marijuana dispensaries and we’re likely to have a beer in our refrigerator. Our sense of what is right is more resembling of a Norman Rockwell painting than a protest march. We don’t believe everything should be free and that work is not a four-letter word (although it has four letters).
We don’t attract a lot of attention and don’t garner the kind of Nielsen ratings that make us appealing. We’re more comfortable with farmers and the town square barber than we are with techies and fashion statements. We understand how blessed we are to be Americans, but also are willing to help those in other parts of the world who need food.
We drive Hondas and Chevys at reasonable speeds and reach for the floss as the red BMW speeds by us, weaving in between three lanes of moderates.
And we know that we’ll probably never be popular! We’ll just be average, or better yet, normal!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Humor, Nation, Parenting, Pastor, Story, Teamwork, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: Broadway Joe, extremists, moderates
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November 19, 2020
My heart breaks for them! They are people who operate effectively on the basis of relational instruction. That is, they are the teachers who long for their students to be with them…physically!
It’s a strange and detached new way of teaching, this virtual education. Teachers want that closeness with their students, but 18 inches away from their faces on a computer screen is not what they had in mind.
And so they keep going, keep hoping, keep encouraging, even when their own spirits have dropped into a deep mine shaft. Their worry now gravitates to when their students return. Will it be like starting over again? Will they have to get them used to sitting up straight at their desks instead of slouching to the side with a comfort blanket wrapped around them?
And when the students are able to come back into the school buildings will it be for a week, two weeks, a month, and then there will be another transition back to remote learning?
So many questions and so little resolution. Peace seems to be fleeing from the scene.
What can teachers do? First of all, they can write in bold letters on their classroom boards, or a paper sticking to their refrigerator at home the words “YOU MATTER!”
Second, they can encourage their teaching teammates, like an orchestra that demands the sound of each instrument to create the symphony, teachers can keep telling their members that they are needed and they are valued.
And third, teachers keep the perspective of a marathon runner who stays focused on the end goal. Runners will talk about “hitting the wall” about three-fourths through the 26.2 mile race. It’s the mental, physical and emotional fatigue point that causes pessimism and discouragement to affect the pursuit. From what I see, many teachers are at “the wall” and struggling to keep going.
Hear it again. You matter! You are essential! You can do this! Your students will respect you even more when you lead them across the finish line!
Categories: children, coaching, Faith, Nation, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: education, elementary teachers, middle school teachers, teachers
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November 15, 2020
It’s an intriguing, even perplexing, problem. In some ways it’s a puzzle that I often faced in my 36+ years as a church pastor. How do you motivate virtual students? How do you shepherd the flock to move along toward the green pastures of more knowledge, understanding, and problem-solving?
I’ve wrestled with the dilemma for some time now. Not being a teacher, but kinda being a teacher, I do not have any neat-and-tidy educational formulas that fit the situation. On the other hand, it might be to my benefit that I don’t have any neat-and-tidy educational formulas to make me believe that this pandemic era eLearning setup is something that can be answered with a step-by-step lesson plan.
My concern is more for the students who are lower performers, students who struggle enough as it is in a normal school classroom setting. To be sure, their are some students who could care less and are using this time of virtual learning to improve on their gaming skills. One student this past week didn’t realize that his microphone was unmuted and the teacher could hear the “ping, ping, ping” of a video game gun being fired. As I’m discovering, there’s even a few parents who are uninterested in their child’s disinterest. But there are those students who need an in-person human voice to help them navigate a problem or assignment. They are the students who don’t see what needs to be done as a math calculation, but rather an unclimbable wall that inhibits them from moving forward.
How do you motivate young minds to gain ground when there is chaos happening all around them?
For me, the relationship with students is the pavement for the instruction. Knowing the students– their dreams and fears, the things that bring smiles to their faces and the topics that make them cringe– helps them believe that I’m there to assist them, not inject more dreariness into their lives. I want them to know that I understand that they will not always be on their A-game, that some days will be immersed with a feeling of meaninglessness.
That element of caring demands more from the teachers than from them. I must be willing to go the extra mile, because their engines have stalled. A gentle push with a few words of encouragement may be the only fuel needed to get them moving again.
However, there are those students who are resistant to being motivated toward academic advancement. For those students, their loss in education must not be multiplied with a loss of relationships. Like the prodigal son that Jesus talked about, they need to know that their teachers will be there for them when they decide it’s time to return to learn. They need to believe that those who lead them in this weird way of doing school have not given up on them.
Tomorrow I’ll see four different screens full of faces, some who have simply rolled over in bed and logged on to class and some who will be expecting to learn. Like a shepherd, I’ll try my best to move the flock on down the road. I’ll punctuate the journey with moments of laughter and words of affirmation, and hopefully we’ll all survive being taken by the predators we encounter along the way.
It’s funny, in a way, that this teaching shepherd is a “Wolf”, but with an ‘e’!
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Freedom, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
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November 8, 2020
Since we’re living in a time when some seem comfortable in the rewriting of history, it makes sense that other parts of our culture are also being redefined.
Like at Starbucks this morning where my tall Pike Place coffee is really the small, or the email I’ve received for fifteen days that says “this is absolutely the last day for this mega-sale.”
Many of my seventh-grade language arts students have decided that the term “deadline” now has a new definition. In the middle school urban dictionary it is rendered like this:
Deadline: An estimate; a suggestion; in academia, the stated time when a student should begin thinking about working on the assignment; an approximation.
Last week- the third week of the new school quarter- I received five different assignments that were part of the first quarter. That is, they were part of the grade that had already been punched in…four weeks ago! Sorry, Charlie!
I’ll receive the glazed over looks again this coming week. “Answer the discussion question and submit it. I’ll give you the next five minutes to complete it.”
What some of the students hear: “Would you consider giving a response to this discussion question and, if it’s not too much of a bother, submit it in the next couple of weeks so that I might have the privilege of granting you a score?”
I must say this! There are plenty of students who are responsible, on-task, committed to the old definition of deadline, and in pursuit of excellence. They give me hope that my hair will not fall out in the midst of instructional agitation.
It’s interesting that the “deadline-redefines” become irritated if the school food service didn’t plan accurately and run out of chicken nuggets, or their video game doesn’t load quickly enough. So, they do show some reaction to slowness.
I’m wondering if in a few years when they become taxpayers if the IRS will understand that they might not get their tax returns completed by April 15? I’m envisioning their 2030 tax return being submitted in 2032…but only halfway done!
Categories: children, Community, Freedom, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: middle school, middle school students, middle school teachers, middle schoolers, Seventh Grade, seventh graders
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November 1, 2020
“So, my very dear friends, don’t get thrown off course. Every desirable and beneficial gift comes out of heaven. The gifts are rivers of light cascading down from the Father of Light.” (James 1:16-17, The Message)
A student in the special needs class at school sees me in the hallway and calls my name. I call back to him and we come together and touch elbows. I give him a “You look awesome, baby!” compliment and he grins so wide I can see all his of teeth.
I play peek-a-boo with our 1-year-old grandson, each peek punctuated with his smile and a dancing, wobbling, walking combo away from me.
I catch the last few moments of the Michigan State victory over Michigan and chuckle. One Green-and-White man’s blessing is another maize-and-blue’s curse!
I walk by Ralph’s house, our 84-year-old neighbor up the street on the corner. We talk about what is and what was, and bring laughter to each other.
They are the moments of life that too often never get considered as the blessings, special seconds that fill in the gaps as we move from one obligation to another. We have this habit of equating blessings with significance in size…promotions, prizes, and prestige. The blessing of a greeting or a peek-a-boo moment gets skipped over as we focus on the headline events of our lives.
The uncertainty of our times makes our sightings of the blessed moments even more important. They are the scattered glitter in a fabric of shadows. See them as you travel through each day…the missing front tooth in the grandkid’s smile, the Far Side cartoon that you’ve chuckled at a dozen times already, the young child who stops in front of your house and salutes the flag that flies from your front porch. Look for the moments that bring melody to your life.
Here’s the thing! When I realize how numerous my blessings in the moments are I’m overwhelmed by…by…I guess I could simply say, my blessedness!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: blessed, blessings, James 1:17, moments that change us
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October 31, 2020
My mailbox and email “box” seems to get filled each day with opinionated positions and stresses telling me I should do this, think in this way, vote in that way, support something or someone in some way.
Although the election season has magnified the clutter, “the shoulds” follow me around like my shadow, always lurking with another appeal to think the way I should think.
The shoulds try to convince me that I should be interested in what they are selling. There’s the guilt pinch that seeks to pain me into believing there is something wrong with my moral character or ethics of life.
In recent times there’s the subtle jab at a few of my spiritual foundational beliefs. Whereas, I’m not one to force someone else to believe the way I do, I am very unease at the chipping away of the bark of my roots. Since I hold the Scriptures as being truth, it’s as if I’m being told my Guide is no longer knows the way.
I should realize that I’m a relic, a “Not-with-it” old fuddy-duddy. But, you see, when you have come to experience peace in your journey that is punctuated with certain routines and firm decisions you see no reason to alter how you understand the living of life.
How I live my life and how our family functions may not work for some others, but neither do the shoulds work for us.
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Community, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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October 25, 2020
A dear friend of mine was telling a story to children at church on a Sunday morning. The point he was striving to make was that we don’t always get what we pray for because God knows what we need. My friend had talked about how he had prayed for a red Corvette, but never received the answer to his prayer.
As often happens with Sunday morning children’s stories, his tale of past personal episodes was slightly derailed by the side point of a six-year-old boy who felt led to explain the error of my friend’s ways. To six-year-olds the solution often seems as obvious as the nose on your face. He tried to soften the harshness of the answer with the gentler word “maybe” as the beginning of his counseling advice.
“Maybe you should have said please!”
Red Corvettes are just a “please” away. There’s a simplicity in a please, and yet if the granting of our prayer concerns was dependent upon our politeness in the words of our prayer our streets might be backed up with red Corvettes and other speed-driven vehicles. No one uttered a prayer with a please and asked for a Yugo (the car that was made in Yugoslavia and resembled Fred Flintstone’s stone-age vehicle).
Perhaps reverence in our conversations with God would connect the depth and intimacy of our prayers more. A prayer request, in some ways, should seem more than asking if the dinner bowl of mashed potatoes would be passed…please! And yet, in other ways, it should be similar to that in the naturalness of the relationship.
God, our Father, desires to hear the longings and aching of our heart. He’s okay with a please attached to it, but is touched by the pleas.
All of us have our wants that we think will bring completeness to our lives, but some of those wants dilute our desire to connect with the Giver. There are times when God gives us something that we didn’t even ask for- no please even required!- but don’t be expecting a red Corvette to roll into your driveway!
Categories: Bible, children, Christianity, Christmas, Community, Faith, Grandchildren, Humor, Jesus, love, Parenting, Pastor, Prayer, Story, The Church, Uncategorized, Youth
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October 23, 2020
Call me weird, but I was kinda looking forward to them. “Them” would be my first parent-teacher conferences…as one of the teachers. I had always been on the other side of the table, hearing how one of our kids was killing it…or getting killed by it: multiplication tables, biology labs, and Spanish tests.
And now I was on the other side of the virtual table, staring at thirtysomethings and a few in their forties. Would they attack my other three teaching teammates (science, social studies, and math) and me (language arts)? Would they be searching for hope in the midst of the lostness? Would it seem like they were our teammates in arriving at some solutions to their son/daughter’s academic struggles? I went into the day and a half of 20-minute get-togethers wondering. Comparing the events to an amusement park, would some of the conferences seem like a ride on the park train, chugging along at a relaxed pace and enjoying the moment, or would it like the merry-go-round going around in circles and never getting there, or the out-of-control roller coaster that caused screaming and the nauseation?
Twenty-six virtual conferences that we didn’t have to pay admission to ride! Truth be told, the worst thing about the experience was the amount of time we spent staring at our computer screens. This morning I’ve got a bit of a headache from the strain, but I’m sitting on my stool in Starbucks sipping my second cup of Pike Place and pondering the possibilities of a three-day weekend.
For the vast majority of conference attenders, there was an openness to hearing what we had to offer and suggest. They quickly perceived that our role was not to unload a torrent of complaints about their almost-teenagers. In fact, some of them were surprised that we were more interested in how they, the parents, and their children were doing in the midst of our hybrid learning structure than we were in talking about the letter grades of the students.
The pandemic has created struggles dressed in different outfits. Some students who have achieved straight A’s have struggled with the absence of school friends who they are socially separated from. Other kids who are not doing well academically have seemed more comfortable in the smaller class sizes and three days online. Students with family drama have sought words of encouragement from the teachers, and those who have always struggled to grasp concepts and ideas are looking to their instructors for a hand to keep them from drowning in the lack of in-person assistance.
I was proud of my three teaching teammates. We were all on the same page, shepherds herding our students toward safer pastures of understanding and conveying demeanors of calmness and our confidence in the abilities of our students.
We’re looking forward to Monday and the continuation of our journey on this new educational frontier.
Categories: children, coaching, Community, Grace, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: parent-teacher conferences, seventh grade teachers, teaching, teaching middle school
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October 18, 2020
Dear Mr. Wolfe,
I hope you are having a very good day. I am not. I no I haven’t turned n mini of my laguage arts a sign mints, but there are mini raisins four that.
First of all, I have you’re class in the afternoon and my lap top is tired by then. My friend told me that I jest need to have my lap top take a nap. It’s kinda a “lap nap”! Ha, ha!
My freind is really smart and whys so I have been pudding my new lap top on the couch for arrest. Sad to say, but lap nap comes during laguage arts class. So lotta a sign mints don’t get done. My freind says you have to do that with new lap tops cause they are like babies that need to rest.
That is why my 16 a sign mints are missing.
You’ve probbly note ussed that I only am missing 5 of the a sign mints that I’ve done when I am there in purson. That’s not mini and is proof that I am tailing you the truth.
I wood do these a sign mints at night, but I have mini odder things to do, like math problimbs and scince xpair a mints.
You are a great teacher and sense my lap top will be older in the next quater I’m sure that I will be able to do badder!
Since surly,
Billy Bob Bricker
Dear Billy Bob,
Thanks for sending me the note to explain your mini a sign mints. I understand your dilemma with “lap naps”. Let me suggest you put your lap top to bed earlier the night before, just as parents with a newborn would do.
And for the coming quarter I have an easy remedy for your situation. When you are in my classroom next Tuesday I will have a package of notebook paper and a box of pencils especially for you. Your name will be on it. This way you can do the a sign mints while your lap top is resting and turn them in to me “hard copy” the next time you are in class. It will also give you a chance to practice your penmanship! An added bonus! It may take a little longer than actually doing the work on your lap top, but I know how necessary naps are!
That is the solution to your dilemma. I’ll be happy and you’ll be “full” of Language Arts. Have a great day! I know I will!
Sincerely,
Mr. Wolfe
Categories: children, coaching, Grace, Grandchildren, Humor, Parenting, Story, Teamwork, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: language arts, middle schoolers, seventh-graders
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October 17, 2020
A teacher, and friend of mine, told me a story last week that brought an ongoing chuckle to my soul. His daughter is a sixth-grader at Timberview Middle School and run cross country this fall- a sport that I head up for the school.
Timberview’s mascot is a timberwolf…the Timberview Timberwolves. Yes, and I’m Coach Wolfe of the Timberwolves!
One day the confused sixth-grader revealed her mental ponderings to her dad and asked the question.
“Why is he called Coach Wolfe?”
It brought a moment of Jeopardy music hesitation to her dad and he realized the roots of her question.
“Well, because that’s his name.”
“It is?” she replied, eyebrows raising. “His name is Coach Wolfe?”
“Yes, dear. That’s his name.”
Yesterday, my 7th Grade Language Arts class met in the school library for each of its sessions. The sixth-grader was also at another table in the library doing her classwork. I noticed that she kept looking at me. I’m not sure if she was trying to discern if there were pointy ears underneath my graying hair and fangs inside my mouth. Perhaps the Little Red Riding Hood story was coming back to her, as I drew each group of seventh-graders into my den.
Names are sometimes puzzling. What may dumbfound her even more is when another teacher from the school goes by me who greets me with a cheerful “Wolfie”, and I return the greeting by saying her married last name.
“Fish!”
Truth be told, some days it feels kind of like a zoo!
Categories: children, coaching, Grandchildren, Humor, Parenting, Story, Uncategorized, Youth
Tags: middle school, middle school students, middle schoolers, names, sixth-graders
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Words from WW Blog 