Roughly seven months ago I shifted out of my paradigm of
seclusion and began this blog. Writing
being one of my natural talents (catching largemouth bass the other), I’ve
enjoyed having a reason to write and am thankful for the audience that has
continued to check in to read my musings.
From the start I wanted to offer a variety of posts but expected I would
write about teaching and nature more than other topics – thus, the title of the
blog….that, and my first choice for a title was taken (“Thought Droppings”). At times I have found blogging to be
therapeutic and at other times stressful, becoming just one more thing to get
done. Every post I’ve written, though,
has had one common thread: they have all forced me to think. None more-so than this post about
end-of-the-school-year countdowns.
That post was simply the worst entry I’ve created. The writing was fine, the idea sound, the
motivation justified…but it completely missed the mark I wrote towards, proven
by some negative feedback that came from unexpected sources. I don’t write hoping for praise, but I rarely
write anything with the hopes of making people mad either. So I’ve read and reread that post dozens of
times, fueled by a desire to grow from failure and avoid such a disappointing
misstep in the future. Here’s what I’ve
learned:
1.
Never
begin writing after 10:00 p.m. It
was after 11:00 when I began that post and well after midnight when I
finished. After teaching all day. With very little energy left in my body or
mind. Dumb.
2.
Write to
inspire, rather than scold. The
intent of that post was to encourage teachers to hang in there and teach like
crazy until the final day of school.
Instead I criticized the tools they planned on using to do just
that. Dumb.
3.
Reserve
judgment until observation is complete.
I was specifically critical of an alphabet countdown that I hadn’t seen
used before…or didn’t remember being used before. A 26-day countdown seemed as silly as
Halloween merchandise hitting store shelves on July 5th. After watching the countdown unfold over the
past few weeks I have a much different opinion – it was silly (dumb) of me to
discount something that has been great fun for the kids and kept them excited
about coming to school. I saw the
effectiveness of the activity through my teacher eyes but also as a father; my
daughter is in one of the classrooms doing the countdown. Which helped me learn to…
4.
Analyze
the audience. We spend too much time
in this PC nation worrying about who might take offense to what, but that
doesn’t mean we can’t take a minute to think about the feelings of those
readers who are closest to us. I crushed
my daughter’s teacher with that post. I
caused hard feelings in others, too, but none more than Mrs. Joy. Yeah, that’s right – her name is “Joy”, she’s
an excellent teacher, my daughter loves her, she’s one of the kindest and
sweetest people on the planet, and I drove daggers into her heart with my
words. Beyond dumb….barbaric might be
the better word.
5.
Thinking,
in it’s various forms, is extremely powerful. My major mistake when writing that post was a
lack of thinking as I wrote. I wrote it
late and I wrote it fast. The thought
put forth while writing was minimal compared to the thinking done since; a
reversal would have produced a better initial product. While reflective thinking, as I’ve done here,
is nourishing when it’s about self, the limited thinking in that post reflected
on others and was nothing more than arrogant.
And dumb.
As I’ve grown older….or just old….I’ve been more conscious
about making an attempt to learn something from everything. Some experiences contain a nugget of new
knowledge and some are like landslides, dropping learning opportunities the size
of boulders on all sides of me. If
success is built by overcoming failures then the landslide triggered by that
poorly written blog should, now that the boulders and debris have settled,
provide some firm footing for moving forward with better, more thoughtful
writing.
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