I have a short devotional delivered to my school email every
day. The goal is that when I sit down to
open my email after I get to school, I will start my day out with that
devotional and hopefully keep it in mind as I teach my students throughout the
day. Some days it works, others it doesn’t. This morning’s devotion was titled “Passing
the Test.” It was talking about
character and integrity and making decisions that are pleasing to God. It was a great message, one that I took to
heart for myself, but I got something a little different out of it too.
The story the author started out with was about a boy who
was terrible at spelling making a bad decision to cheat on his spelling
test. The teacher was shocked as she saw
what he was doing, but said nothing. As
he got up to turn in his test, he paused in front of the trash can and slowly
started tearing up his test. He had made
the honest decision in the end to take a zero on the test instead of using
someone else’s work. As I was reading
this several things went through my mind.
First, my heart went out to the student who struggled with his
test. I have lots of students who struggle,
not all of them with school work. The
things that some of my kids have to deal with breaks my heart. And what gets me even more are the poor
decisions that so many of them make that make their situations worse. Secondly, the cheating is something that I’m
battling right now. I wish that some of
my students could be as honest as the kid in the devotion. This too, goes back to poor decision
making.
In three of my classes, we’ve been talking about lifestyle
choices, the consequences of those choices, and taking responsibility for our
actions. I realize that most of them
that already make poor choices will probably not listen to me or take any of
what I say to heart. But if I can reach
one. Just one. Then I will have made a difference. Isn’t that why we teach anyway, to make a
difference?
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