Onward, Forward

For many years, for reasons of my own, I didn't go around advertising my college affiliation. It's only been in the last few years I listed it on Facebook.  Like including my maiden name, it's so people from my past can find me. (Not that anyone has exactly beat down the door to find me, let alone connect.)  One look at our family photo and the opinion pendulum swings from "Thank God they survived that college" to "Poor things fell from grace."

I have no reason to address either concern.  When it comes to opinions, I take to Kipling's advice, "If all men count with you, but none too much."

That being said, there are many things I'm very thankful for from my college experience, the one which I want to praise today being teacher training.  Guess what?  We weren't taught to use standardized curriculum.  I have marveled in the years since graduation at all the nicely packaged curriculums that have been developed, many for both classroom and home school use - all organized and laid out and ready to use so that most of the teacher's work is to implement lesson plans right out of the box.

We didn't get that.  Many of the teachers I studied under WROTE their own curriculum and our lessons as future teachers were to WRITE our own lessons. While textbooks were used as a starting point for many disciplines, it was fitted to the students, not vice versa.   Even classic Zaner-Bloser handwriting material was supplemented with exercises and practice of our own writing and choosing. We learned to research, to be resourceful and creative. This mindset extended into student teaching where we had to be innovative while nailing the study material.

I left college equipped to teach, but didn't.  By the time I graduated I had a husband and a family which took priority. That's not to say the education was wasted -  it most certainly equipped me to be a better parent and later on to teach adults believe it or not.  In the beginning it was in a career capacity, then ministry, then public service and now  . . . . children.  The same age group I taught back then no less.  All these years I've been practicing by writing lessons and power point presentations for grown ups and now its the real deal - teaching children about God.

And true to the way Mr. Smith, Mrs. Barbier, and my other wonderful instructors taught, the "textbooks" turned out to be a springboard, a starting point to get me headed in the direction God is leading this thing.

I had the blessing of meeting someone I had admired as a youth a few years ago. Jessie Rice Sandberg wrote for a nationwide publication for many years and turned out to be as warm and engaging and down to earth as I had imagined her to be forty years before.  One comment she made during that meeting was that God's (main) purpose for our lives might very well be during these late afternoon and sunset days of our lives. With my own kids all grown and managing their lives without my help now, that gives me hope.  It is a challenge to rise to.

And I thank Hyles Anderson College, First Baptist Church of Hammond and Hammond Baptist Grade School for their part in helping me meet that challenge.