Attitude of Gratitude

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."
-Melody Beattie

As we approach the Thanksgiving holiday this week, like many people, I find myself taking stock of the blessings in my life. I have a healthy, happy family who sometimes listens to what I have to say. My wife and I are both employed in the fields we chose as our professions. While the road to recovery is still stretched out before us, we are confident my father is winning his battle with cancer. The list of personal gratitude could go on and on. 

These are important things to think about this time of year, but I also think that simply being aware and acknowledging what we are thankful for falls short of what we can accomplish with a gracious attitude in everything we do. Where better than education to look for ways to turn "denial to acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity"? There is no doubt that we have many challenges ahead, but I urge all of you to make an effort to look at these challenges as opportunities for growth and to be thankful for them. Some of the greatest innovations in history have been achieved by people who are under stress to solve a critical problem. How fortunate we are to be in this position! Okay, that may have been slightly sarcastic.

Anyway, it is nice to be thankful, but it is also super nice to know that others are thankful for you. I hope it is abundantly clear that I am beyond grateful to have such an amazing staff to work with every day, but I am not the person whose gratitude would likely mean the most to you. I urge all of you to take a little time in class this week to have your students write a quick Thank You note to an adult in our school who has helped them this year. Collect them and distribute them in mailboxes. If you need help getting them distributed, let me know. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm Full of It

Image
"Teaching should be full of ideas instead of stuffed with facts." -Unknown I remember having to memorize all sorts of things in school. At one point, I could recite the first 30-some elements of the periodic table, all of the state capitals, the presidents in order, and the states in alphabetical order. I can still do the state thing, which blows my wife away because they did not sing that particular song at her Catholic elementary school. My kids probably can't do any of those things, but I see them doing things that I couldn't have even begun to attempt at their age. The age of information is transforming our relationship with information, with facts. There was a time when memorizing the periodic table may have been helpful because it saved you the time of pulling out a book to find it. The investment of time to memorize it presented a positive return in the time you would save constantly having to find it. Now that we are all carrying the sum total of the co
Read more

Oxygen Masks

"When you take care of yourself, you're a better person for others. When you feel good about yourself, you treat others better. " -Solange Knowles I was reminded this morning, as I almost slid through a stop sign, that in spite of some mild weather last week, we are likely several weeks away from the end of winter. This realization kind of bummed me out, to be honest. I had already let my mind turn toward thoughts of spring activities and getting back out into the fresh air, but this morning I'm reminded that it is still January. These thoughts let me to other thoughts about how quickly January has gone. Really, as we look ahead to parent teacher conferences and then PARCC followed by Spring Break, this whole semester is likely to fly by, and we will be enjoying those warm spring days before we know it, but his week is all about heart health, and I know winter is a time where it is easy to fall into some bad habits, so much like flight attendents remind us
Read more

#OneTribe

"I realized if you can change a classroom, you can change a community, and if you change enough communities you can change the world." -Erin Gruwell For anyone who attended last night's varsity girls Sectional Championship game, I hope you felt the same sense of pride and community when our (significantly larger) crowd erupted when our girls took the court to begin their warmups and then over and over again throughout the game, especially in that very exciting first half. For about 90 minutes, any differences some individuals in attendance may have with one another, we were united in a common purpose-- to support our Lady Redskins up until the final buzzer sounded, at which point they earned a well deserved standing ovation for giving us all something to get excited about this week. I love moments like that. Championship runs are a prime example of the sense of community that can be built when a group of people all share a common goal or sense of purpose, when
Read more