A renewed sense of purpose!

Eleven years ago when I was a tutor for the Crenshaw Chapter of the World Literacy Crusade, I went through a six-month long training where we were given many strategies on our quest to combat illiteracy.

One of the key concepts that I was taught and will always remember and use is this: If you get to the end of a paragraph and don’t know what you just read, there were only one or two words (or concepts) that you didn’t understand.

To make sure that an understanding is reached, you have to go back and clear (i.e., make sure they’re clear to you) those words by defining them. After you’ve defined them, you then go back and re-read the paragraph. Voila! Now you should have an understanding.

This reminds me of my current situation. I know that there are only one or two things that I am not getting. However, once I get ‘em, I know there will be no stopping me.

It’s funny when your brain is so cluttered and your mind is so bogged down with all the minutiae of every day life that you can’t think straight. For weeks, I have been in a funk, nay, a rut. I knew that I was in one, but I didn’t know how to get out of it. That is such a horrible feeling. I knew that I could do better but didn’t have the slightest idea how to.

I’m trying not to be too hard on myself, but I know that somehow I could have done a better job. I could have gone to one more website; read the OCR book for one more clue; something!

Even though I wonder to myself if there was something else I could have done, I guess I have to ask myself, “How could I have known?”

I wanted to do better but I just didn’t know how. I thought that if I could conquer my lack of planning skills that I could be the teacher that I know I can be.

Well, I am on track to do just that. I just had a meeting with the Principal that was quite productive.
Well, after the meeting, I now know what some of the pieces are. I haven’t been teaching it in a systematic way. My students have made so much progress. Just think if I had been teaching systematically how much progress they could have made.

I am on a mission again. I have a renewed sense of purpose. It turns out the only thing standing in my way was me.

I have to succeed because as always failure is not an option!