I have been doing a Daniel Fast for almost 40 days. This
fast is not a “no food” fast, it requires the elimination of any animal or
animal byproducts, dairy, alcohol, artificial sweeteners, and sugar. I basically eat any fruit, any vegetable,
hummus, and quinoa. My fast will be over
on Saturday. I have done very well-except for one Saturday-it had been a bad
week. While I haven’t lost any weight, I
have felt amazing and have started to rethink what I eat and what I purchase.
While at the grocery store Sunday afternoon, I was purchasing premade salads
for my lunch each day this week. I was contemplating the various types of
salads the store offered when one slipped out of hand, fell to the concrete
floor of the store, and rained romaine lettuce upon me like a big ole salad
confetti party. Now I don’t get embarrassed often. I am so used to doing dumb
stuff that embarrassing me is difficult. Yet, as I stood in the grocery store
picking lettuce, raisins, cranberries, and olives off me, two employees came
running over to assist in my clumsiness.
MANY other shoppers passed me as I stood in my aftermath of my salad
shower. A few did not even notice as they were too engrossed in their own
shopping, a few looked at me with such judgement as if I were the least qualified grocery
shopper out there, and a few smiled in great sympathy, one or two chuckled, and one
even made fun of me.
It didn’t matter the looks of sympathy or the looks of
disdain. Nothing could compare to the humiliation that I felt. As I was detailing my story of embarrassment
to my family, they all laughed at me and yelled “report card”.
My family gets to hear “school stories” all the time. Every
single time the Rosebros get their report cards, they are reminded of the time
that I sent home report card envelopes home with my students----completely
empty. Not a report card in any one envelope. This was well before the days of computer
generated report cards and the report on attendance had been given to me at the
last minute. During my planning period, I was filling out attendance at my
portable desk while the foreign language teacher was teaching my students in my
classroom. I was interrupted by the principal who wanted help with a fundraiser
and at the end of the day I sent home empty envelopes. I realized my mistake
about 5 minutes after school when I was reloading my portal desk and saw the
report cards. I tried emailing parents-but back then not everyone had an email
address. I tried calling parents as well. I also had two parent emails and one
parent phone call before I left school.
Imagine how bad I felt the very next day when one of my students and his
mom were waiting for me at my door when I arrived. She declared that she had
had it with her son’s lying ways and he had been severely punished the night
before for hiding his report card and she wanted to see a copy of his report card. I felt like the worst
teacher ever……poor student had actually brought up his grades, begged his mom
to believe him, but he had been punished because his horrible terrible teacher
had made a mistake. I was obsessive after that about checking report card
envelopes. Almost 15 years later, I still get upset by this mistake. (The
mother, by the way, laughed and stated that she was sure her son had done something
to deserve the punishment she had given him and she wasn’t at all upset with
me)
We educators make mistakes all the time. If you pause for
just a second, you can probably think of something small and/or big that you’ve
done mistakenly. Sometimes we feel like we’ve made mistakes-even we
haven’t. But the good news is, our
mistakes don’t define us, they help us grow. I don’t know if you are like me,
but I always see failure to grow is failure to thrive and failure to
contribute. The best part of failure is opportunity. It gives us the
opportunity to rethink how we handle procedures, classroom management, and
instruction. Mistakes help us do better
next time. Mistakes help define our greatness because along the path we will
make mistakes We will do things that we wish we could press the rewind button
on and have a do-over. Boy, do I wish I could go back and put those report
cards in the envelopes. But, I can’t. I cannot take back that mistake or the
hundreds of other mistakes I have made. The beauty of it all is that I use that
mistake every single day to remind me of double checking where I put things
(this may be why I never lose things). Additionally, when I forgot those report
cards, I did not try to cover it up. I did not try to lie or my way out of it
or make excuses as to why I did it, I didn’t blame the powerschool clerk for
getting me the report late, or blame my principal for making me have my
planning period on a cart rather than in my class-I owned that mistake. I
immediately went to my principal, I made phone calls, I sent emails. I
apologized to parents. And, I figured out how NOT to make that mistake again.
Mistakes happen every single day. Mistakes are not meant to defeat you, they
are meant to teach you. The really
important thing to do afterwards is to reflect upon that mistake and NOT do it
again. Bear Bryant once said when you
make a mistake you do three things: “admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat
it.”
People make mistakes, mistakes don’t make you.
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