Stop saying, "I'm sorry."

Before you demand an apology from me...read on.

I didn't say, stop apologizing. I said, stop saying, "I'm sorry."

There is a more meaningful way to apologize.

Let's use an example to drive this point home.

Sam and Bill are both 3rd graders in the same class.

Sam walks over to Bill's desk, takes his pudding cup, and starts eating it. When Bill gets back from the water fountain, he sees Sam with a smile on his face as well as some of his pudding.  Bill is MAD and SAD! I would be too...I love pudding!

Bill starts crying and their teacher walks over to investigate. After about seven seconds, the truth is clear. The teacher reprimands Sam and he tucks his chin into his chest with a scowl on his face and says, "I'm sorry" as he storms away. 

Bill is still crying, Sam is upset that he got yelled at, and nothing has been rectified. On top of that, Bill and Sam will probably not be friends for the rest of the day.

Sam apologized, but it didn't mean anything. He said it because he knew he was supposed to, but it didn't have any meaning, feeling, or sincerity behind it. It was a "fire and forget" apology that did nothing to show remorse, support the healing of Bill, or mend their friendship.

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When something happens where an apology is warranted, there was usually a power imbalance in which the person who did the wrong thing took power away from whoever was wronged. In this case, Sam took the power away from Bill by taking his pudding cup and eating it. Bill was wronged by Sam. Let's see how we can remedy this power imbalance by having Sam apologize in a more meaningful way. 

Sam says to Bill, "Bill. Please forgive me for taking your pudding cup and eating it."

Sam, who originally had the power advantage, just tipped the scale in Sam's direction by the way he worded his apology. Sam is now at the mercy of Bill and his choice to forgive him or not for the infraction. Even though he will not get his pudding cup back, the ball is now in his court and he gets to make the decision, not Sam. 

He did not have a choice to eat his pudding cup. That choice was taken away from him. But he has a choice now. The scale will be tipped in Bill's favor until he makes the choice to balance it again by forgiving Sam. 

How we apologize and forgive each other can be very shallow with the "fire and forget" form of, "I'm sorry," or it can be meaningful and sincere by shifting the power imbalance to the injured person and allowing them to shift the scale back to zero. By placing meaning, feeling, and sincerity behind an apology, it will also speed up the healing process and let us get back to being friends, and hopefully eating pudding!

Try this technique the next time you have to apologize for something. You will feel a twinge of uneasiness as you realize you have given up all power on whether you will be forgiven or not. That decision is not up to you. It is up to the person you wronged. 

Gain control of your life while homeschooling: 3 Tips

Most of us had very little time to prepare for our kiddos to be home with us ALL THE TIME!
Not only that but now we need to not only be parents but also teachers. Both of those things are full-time jobs. That's on top of your regular job if you still have one, or if you are working from home. That means that you have not one, but two, possibly three full-time jobs you are trying to do all at once. That's insane. Here are some tips to try and regain some control over your life.

1) Keep a Schedule: This is paramount. Everyone in the house when from being on a tight schedule to make the bus, make it to the office on time, etc. to basically no schedule or a haphazard schedule with about a day's notice. Regain some order by keeping a schedule, although it doesn't have to be as strict as before, it does have to have some rigidity to it.

Here is an example of a schedule I'm using with my nine-year-old son. Because I am me, I put it on a spreadsheet (it looks a lot like a football practice schedule...weird), printed it out, and put it in a document protector:

Before 7:30- Wake-up; Read for 20 min.; screen time
7:30- iPad is put away; Breakfast (TV Okay)
8:00- Morning chores; Some activity that blesses someone else (I want to stress placing other first)
10:00- Screen Free Free Time
12:00- Lunch (TV Okay); Academic Activity
1:30- Screen Free Free Time
3:30- Screen Time (Only if chores, blessing others, and academic activity are all complete)
4:30- Evening chores/Family dinner
6:00- Family time! Movie, Game, Walk, Screen Time
8:00- Bedtime routine; Sandwich (Not a snack, I'll explain later); pray; Mr. Rodgers
9:00- ASLEEP!

Your schedule should have a lot of flexibility built into is, but it should also have the key components of your day. As we move into an eLearning environment, maybe this schedule will change, but the framework will remain in place.

What is "Sandwich?"
We talk briefly about our day and then we each take turns with the following 3 questions that help us frame the day and set us up for prayer.
1) What is something I was grateful for today?
2) What is something I want to ask God to forgive me for today?
3) What is something that I am excited about tomorrow?

2) Read: We have been given a great opportunity to calm ourselves, slow down and read. I have made it a point as part of my schedule to get up at the same time every day
and read. Have your kids so the same thing. Make time to calm yourselves and read. Read by yourself, read with your kids, have your kids read by themselves and with you.

Making a habit of reading will set your children (and you!) up for success later in life. Insist on reading a little bit every day not as a punishment, but as a way of expanding knowledge and learning how to learn. What kind of books you ask? Any kind. You don't have to read books! Magazines and comics make great reading.

3) Write: This is something that I have forces to make a priority. Just like reading, writing can be a valuable, life-long skill. The only better to get better at it is to do it. Writing can take on many forms such as this blog, or a personal journal. It doesn't have to be much but set aside some time for you (and your kids!) to write a little bit every day. If you write for yourself, that's fantastic. If you write for someone else, you can really spread goodness. During this time of quarantine, most people head to the mailbox only to find bills and junk mail. Brighten their day by sending a handwritten letter or aa postcard. Not sure who to write to? Call your local nursing home and ask if there is someone there that you can be pen-pals with, even if it's a one-way relationship. With no visitation hours, I know
that there are some lonely folks who would love to get a letter in the mail!

A very good friend of mine set up a "pen pal project" with a bunch of her parent friends to get the kids writing. She carried into account ages and living arrangements and I am excited to see my son's face light up when he gets his first letter. I'm sure the same will be true on the other end.

This is a tough time for everyone, but we can make the most of it. Start with these simple tips to start to bring order back to your life. No one knows what the next day, week, or month will look like, but we can be certain that keeping a schedule, reading, and writing will never go out of style.

Also: Go take a shower and comb your hair. With all the barbershops and hair salons being closed, we may need to start getting creative!  As for me, I have a nice collection of hats.

Change in Plans

Teaching, much like life, throws us curve-balls now and again.
Sometimes those result in a a, "STIIIIIIIIRIKE!"
Other times we hit a home run....this week has bee a HOME RUN!
(See the baseball reference....)

Coming back from spring break (I had one day of break due to working for the Army...whomp whomp) I had the idea of getting out our Keva planks and building some bridges.  We haven't done that in a while. We have been doing a lot of brain work lately with dice and cards, and clay. I wanted to get some things moving with building and breaking things.

When I came into my room, I was happy to find some things I had ordered showed up!  Two big kits of K'Nex and some laserclasrroom light kits.  I received some ZOOB's earlier in the month and had been waiting on the K'Nex to show up so we could do stations.

I threw my bridge idea away and within about 15 min. had a plan to work with our new toys.
It has been a riot watching my students explore with our new gadgets!

I took the light kits to the middle school and it has been great watching 5th graders work together on different light experiments.

As always, you can see more on Twitter.

Better than a Video Game!

he last few weeks I have been trying to give my students some tools to use over Christmas break. I have been giving them simple STEM games that they can play at home either by themselves or with a few friends/parents/relatives/people/whomever. 

Two weeks ago we played "STUCK IN THE MUD" and "KNOCKOUT." Both simple dice games that reinforce the idea of probability. My students had a blast playing, and I had a few come back and say that they had played at home.  You can see my score sheets HERE! Make your own or print these off!

This week we are playing a simple form of YAHTZEE!  I have it scaffolded for EK/K/1, 2/3, and 4th grade. With the younger students I only give them two dice and one roll. The middle group gets three dice and two rolls, while the 4th graders get five dice and three rolls. It has worked well! I was a little concerned (as I often am) with the EK and K groups, but they are adding and having fun. I know that my students will have screen time this Christmas break, but my hope is that they will put the iPad down for a fun STEM game with some of their friends
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Christopher Columbus: The worlds biggest FAILURE!

Watch his story here!

With Monday being Columbus day, I thought it would be a great week to talk about one of the biggest failures of all time!

Floating Easy

That may seem harsh, but Christopher Columbus failed miserably at his mission.  He was trying to get to India.  He missed by about 15,000 miles. Not his fault though!!  He thought the earth was a lot smaller than it really is.  It's hard to fault a guy for that when most of the world still believed that the world was flat!  Almost everyone he came across told him he was crazy for one, thinking the earth was round, and two, for wanting to go sail off the edge of it. 

So how do you celebrate a man who failed.  Easy! Christopher Columbus may have failed at his attempt to find the West Indies, but he was brave enough to try! He could have listened to his critics and not tried at all, but, because he was persistent, he opened up trade routes with the Americas and is credited as the first European to set foot on these new lands. 

It's SINKING!

He tried so hard, that he succeeded, even in failure.

The boats come in all shapes and sizes. A few students have realized (Sometimes before and sometimes after) that a wider boat works better. Next lesson? Displacement! HA!

The main lesson this week is that even when the world (flat or round) is against you, you should always go with your dreams. Even if you fail, you may end up doing something extraordinary.

There is saying that says, "Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss you'll land among the stars."
That's what Columbus did. You should too.

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Football / Life Lessons

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Coaching football has taught ME some very valuable lessons. These lessons held true at Gwinn, L'Anse, and here at Kingsford.

I have learned to never (ever) assume that players know what I'm talking about:

"We need to shift into cover three when they show us twins to the boundary."

Blank stares. Gotta put that on the white board, show it on the field, then show them on film VanDusen!

I have learned to over simplify things. A thinking teenager is a slow teenager. I want my players to play fast which means I have to make the thinking easy and/or non-existent.

More importantly, I hope to teach young men valuable lessons.  Not only about the game of football, but also about life.  Here are three lessons that have been prevalent this past season.  They are in no particular order, and this list is FAR from inclusive.

1) Master things that take no talent.  This isn't my quote, but I absolutely love it. In football, this means watching film, reading scouting reports, going hard every play, etc.  Every football coach I know has a story of a player who had the heart of a lion. He gave absolutely everything he had to the game, yet never got very far due to a lack of talent. That player is usually a coaches favorite, despite the lack of output.  This player, although they may not be a great football player, will succeed in life because they are attempting to master the things that take no skill. They will find their skill, whether it's being a plummer, lawyer, or teacher.  They will find out their skill and their mastery of talent-less skills will serve them well. of In life it can mean being to work on time, driving without distraction, and paying bills on time.

2) You play exactly how you practice. One of my favorite stories (I don't know if it's true or not...) comes out of Iraq in 2003.  A group of American Soldiers got into a small gunfight. Prior to getting back in their trucks and moving to the engagement area, a young Soldier stooped over and began picking up his brass. His sergeant yelled at him to get back in the truck and he did, but a VALUABLE lesson was learned.  In training, that Soldier would take the extra minute or two to pick up his brass, because when the training event was over, they would have to go pick it up anyway to turn it in.  He was fighting exactly how he trained.
In football, however you practice, that is how you play. Do you carry out your fakes? Do you block till the whistle? Do you force your players into a tight huddle?  Whatever you do on the practice field, expect it on game night.

3) You can't control what happens to you, you can only control your reaction to it. (Again, not mine, but I love it!) Last night, our quarterback rolls to his left on the second play of the game. He spies an open receiver, squares his hips, cocks the ball and begins his throwing motion. The ball slips out of his hand and the defender who was chasing him down from the back side had a gift land right in his hands. He returned it for a touchdown and we go down 6-0.  We couldn't control the rain making the ball slick. We couldn't control the defender ripping through a great block and pursuing from the backside.  We couldn't control the fact that he was able to take it back for six points.  All we could control was our reaction to it. 
So what did we do?  We got a great kick return. Ran three plays for 45 yards and a touchdown.  Then we scored the two point conversion. Now we are winning 6-8. I like that reaction.
In life all kinds of crazy things can happen. You can set the conditions to be in your favor, but at the end of the day, you can't control what happens to you. Flat tire. Car accident. Hail storm damaging your roof. What are you going to do about it?

I love football.
It is an amazing game and I have build some incredible relationships with coaches and players that I couldn't have anywhere else.

Aaron Rodgers was quoted in ESPN magazine as saying, "I hope I don't just do this."
He said that after winning the Super Bowl. (Read the Article Here)

I can reflect on the past 10 years of coaching and know that I do more than just football. Some days my day seems DOMINATED by football, and it is.  But I also know that those young men who snap their helmets on every week are learning lessons that will help them do more than, "this."