Book excerpt: Teaching Tips from Week 36

As we come to the end of our school year, I just wanted to share a few pages from my book that will help you coast your way to the end.  Sometimes you just need a little reminder...  

Ten Tips For Better Teaching

1. Purpose – Remember that you have been destined and designed for this.  Regardless of what you think, God has created you, everything about you to impact the life of your students.          Jeremiah 1: 5
2. Prayer – Continue to pray without ceasing.  Be specific in what you desire and what you need. God has promised to give you wisdom and rest.  Just A.S.K. (ask, seek and knock)  Matthew 7:7 and Matthew 11: 28-30
3. Power – Understand that you have been given power from on high to trample the enemy.  Your words, God’s Word spoken again by you are weapons against the enemy and they are life to your every need.  Speak life.           2 Corinthians 10: 4-5
4. Preparation – Plan up to the very end.  Kids who have nothing to do can and will begin to get on your nerves.  You don’t need the bible to tell you that!
5. Pollinate – Although you may feel a little stretched, be willing to speak encouragement or help out a fellow teacher (especially the new ones) during this time of year.  Help out those who need help in growing. 
6. Perseverance – 2 John 1: 8 Says it best: Watch out that you do not lose what you have worked for, but that you may be rewarded fully.  Don’t give up now.
7. Personality – Nehemiah 8:10 says that “the joy of the Lord is your strength”.  Now’s not the time to be a sourpuss.  Draw joy and love from Jesus so that you can be a reflection of His joy, His compassion, His loving kindness towards others.  Let your light so shine…
8. Pleasing – Hebrews 13: 20-21 says “May the God of peace,… _v21 equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to Him, through Jesus Christ…”  Allow God to do the work in you so that you will be pleasing to Him.  In doing so, you will also become pleasing to those around you.  
9. Placement – Jeremiah 29:11 God knows the plans He has for you.  This tip on placement is not just about a choice in grade level, school or district, but it’s much deeper than that.  It’s really about trust.  Trust God to place you in situations, in ear shot of conversations, around your colleagues so that you can be used HOWEVER God needs for that particular need.  Someone may just need your smile or encouraging word and God places you two in the hallway alone.  Every time, every situation belongs to God.  
10. Peace - Isaiah 26:3 You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.  Trust in God and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will direct you paths.  Peace comes directly from God. Seek Him and you will find it.

Hold His hand and finish this race.

Remember keep starting your Monday with the Master.

Young, T. (2014). Start Your Monday With The Master. Sandston, Virginia: JDI Publisher Co.

Image retrieved from:  https://www.pinterest.com/pin/471611392198706215/

It's the Big Payback!

I just finished putting my seven month old grandson to sleep! 

Whew! 

Today was supposed to be the last day of his summer visit here in America but their flight back to St. Maarten got cancelled.  We didn't find that out until we had arrived all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at the airport at O'dark-thirty this morning.  No sweat off our backs. One more day was an unexpected blessing!  

We threw the luggage back in the van, sped home and ate a hearty breakfast.  Unfortunately, as the eyelids of everyone over the age of thirteen around the table began to droop and every final slide of pancakes across puddles of syrup met slowing lips, the little tyke increased in energy. 

SOURCE:musicmookreview.com

My mother in-law and I chuckled at the exasperation on my daughter's face and traded stories of how our kids had defied the moral code of sleeping during decent hours...well my kids did, hers slept from 9-3.  I reminisced about how car rides didn't work for one, closing the door while they went to sleep on their own didn't work for another (she would climb out the crib and find me...creepy #shudders) and how my mom said I deserved everything I got since I happened to be part bat and secretly conspired to suck years from her youth when I was just a wee tot.  So I volunteered to take him with me to drop off his two young aunties at summer camp so everyone could catch forty winks without interruption.

I intended to have a white noise fest and knock him out cold. We headed off down the road, AC pumping and windows down; which didn't turn out as well as I anticipated. Today happened to be trash day and the sanitation truck drivers around here must have been told to leave a Hansel and Gretel trail of garbage juice on all of the roads so they could find their way back to the dump. 

SOURCE:lemurandbushbaby.wikia.com

"How's he doing?" I asked, wrinkling up my nose.   
"He's not sleep yet," my eleven year old said, curling her top lip in disgust.  
Ten minutes later, I dropped them off and headed over to the gas station....  blink, blink, kick, kick, grin, grin.

I looked at him and thought,  "You may be tough, but grandma is the original queen of "I'm up now and I ain't going down without a fight!"

I stared at him through the side window while I pumped gas... blink, blink, kick, kick, grin, grin.  

Hmmm, what's the best way to put down a third generation strong willed baby bat who believes the main objective of every adult is to put him to sleep?

Harps and guitars playing Baptist hymns!!! 

SOURCE:pastorjoe.me

All gassed up now, I look in the back and see the feet still kicking and press play on my iTunes playlist featuring a CD I got from Our Daily Bread.  Needless to say, after smelling the winding trails of lost trash trucks and cleaning plastered gnats off my glasses as I took the looooong way home through my county, the kicking wound down to an occasional head roll and soft snore.  Victory is mine...at least until he wakes up!

While this battle of the wills and quest for utter dominance of babies over mothers seems to be on repeat for my family, it's nothing I would wish as payback on my daughters when they have children of their own. Figuring out how to bribe the Sand Man to increase his dosage on your kids is not a Girl Scout patch that has to be earned by every mother. Just like having the class from H- E double hockey sticks during your first year teaching isn't a badge that new teachers should have to earn either.

As educators, we all know that class lists are either generated by computers or handpicked with fairness or devilish intentions.  Whatever the case may be, it often seems that new teachers get the pick of the liter that everyone is glad they don't have. Then, the seasoned teachers and administrators sit back and rip the new teacher to shreds for not having any classroom management. Really?

SOURCE:mosoulfood.wordpress.com

So, this is what I propose to you who have the heart of Jesus pumping His mercy and grace giving blood through your veins.  Remember Proverbs 11:25 NIV.

A generous person will prosper;

    whoever refreshes others will be refreshed.

If you're looking to have a good year, make sure to look for those who are not having one.  Take the lesser experienced teacher or administrator under your wings. You know with God all things are possible.  So, it could be possible that this year your job is to teach, but your assignment is the teacher down the hall.  1 Peter 4: 10 says that each of us is to use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. 

As I quoted in a previous blog, you may be the only bible some people ever read.  Therefore, this school year, make it a point to fill your pages with love and truth.

SOURCE: faithgateway.com

The Lord is with you and you are loved,

Toni

P.S.  Don't forget to join me on www.educatordominion.com by clicking on the Home link at the top of this page starting July 27th for our Forty Days of Prayer for Education campaign.  Get a copy of the ebook today! 

P.S.S.     He's up!!!

Wear Your Worship Inside and Out

When the Lord brought back the captives to Zion, we were like men who dreamed.  Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy.  Then it was said among the nations, "The Lord has done great things for them." The Lord has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.  Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him.                -Psalm 126 NIV

Hi educator friend!

I just wanted to remind you this week of your assignment to be God's change agent in your school! You are His beloved, cherished and highly favored child.  

Your worship... our worship... draws us closer and closer to Him. This loving relationship that we develop with God not only pleases Him and us, but it overflows into the lives of those around us. Through our times with Him we hear and see His desire to call others to that same love that we experience.  

It's such a blessing to be saved and filled with His Holy Spirit. It's unexplainable  peace and joy in the midst of  test and trials.  It's perseverance well after the human spirit feels like giving up. It's favor in conjunction with the creativity you were born with.  It's wisdom welding the sledge hammer to break up that wall that your back is against.  It is His love deep within us and there is nothing on this earth that equals or surpasses it. 

Psalm 126 reflects on God's goodness from this liberated side of salvation. It is sung by people who are so exuberantly filled with joy that "the [gentile] nations", people who previously were oblivious to the very existence of God, now acknowledge not only His existence but His goodness to His people.    It is a song of Ascents, a song sung while going up God's mountain to worship Him.  Thankfully, we do not have to trek up a specific mountain to worship before the Lord!  We can actually do it right where we are by praising Him and acknowledging our love for Him.  Hallelujah Jesus!  We love you!

So together, we'll trek up this mountain of worship.  As we head up, let's stop and smell the flowers. Let's pick a few and create a garland to place around our head or neck. Don't worry about your allergies, you'll be just fine. Trust Him.

This beautiful garland that we will  wear is going to be so strikingly beautiful and creatively intertwined that others will ask, "Where did you get that?" "How did you make that?" "Where can I get one?"   This garland is our salvation testimony and each flower represents every triumphed test and trial bound together with the True Vine. Wearing this give credence to the saving power and grace of God.

Dear educator, do you wear your testimony so that others may marvel at it? Are you willing to allow others to see and smell the saving grace of God in your life?  This is the essence of you being a Change Agent. While the bible says that it rains on the just and the unjust, our outcome should be different from those who do not believe in God.  We all may experience budget cuts and financial burdens, but God's educators come out on the other side laughing and singing His praises.  We all may experience difficult working environments and annoying people in which we have to interact with, but God's educators come out on the other side laughing and singing His praises.  Why, because although we may cry, we sow seeds of righteousness in the midst of (Hosea 10:12) and reap the fruit of His unfailing love.

We are the evidence of His love. Confidently speak of His goodness and live (as Joel Osteen would say) your best life now. Be God's evidence of provision in your patience, comfort in your calling and help in your hardship.

Romans 10: 14 But how can they call on Him to save them unless they believe in Him? And how can they believe in Him if they have never heard about Him? And how can they hear about Him unless someone tells them? 

Wear this...

 to show them this.

They won't believe unless you show them the evidence.

Dear Grace giving God,

Thank you for loving us so much that it overflows in our speech.  Thank you for giving us so much joy that it is heard in our laughter and songs. Thank You for blessing us with garments of praise and the oil of gladness.  We bless You and honor You and say "Hallelujah" for creating beauty out of the test and trials of our lives.  Help us to confidently and boldly display the splendor of the saving power and grace of Jesus Christ to those we encounter on a daily basis.

In Jesus' name,

Amen

Please enjoy this week's song:  "Something Within Me" by Take 6