For my Callings

Day Four: Grateful for my Callings

The idea that one has a "purpose" or a "calling" on one's life is another one of those universal thoughts that many different spiritual traditions have identified. I've connected to mine through my Christian faith, but you don't have to be a Christian to know you have gifts and talents, or passions in life that call to you.

I think it's part of human psychology, deep-rooted in our social-animal nature, to want our lives to make a difference in the world. We find our reason for being in what we perceive to be our life's purpose.

Conversely, I don't think I've ever met any more unhappy kind of person than those who don't think they have any particular purpose, no reason to exist. They swell the ranks of the suicidal, because they really don't believe they matter--even when they very much DO.

My faith-tradition tells me that I was uniquely created by God, and placed here in this moment and location for specific reasons--with tasks set before me, which I was specifically crafted to do well. It is part of my faith-walk to seek out my callings (we all come with several), and fulfill them as faithfully as I can.

That means I must know myself, in as much honesty and fullness as I can. I must look at myself critically, and evaluate my strengths and weaknesses to the best of my ability, nakedly before God (God already knows, of course; there's no fooling, or faking God out).

What am I drawn to do? Where do my skills, talents, and natural abilities lie? If I was created by God to fulfill certain callings as faithfully as I can, then I must also believe that God has attuned my heart to them (why else would they be identified as callings, after all?). When I am fulfilling the best uses I can find for the callings I feel most passionate about, then I believe I am operating at the heart of God's will for me.

I don't know any other way to faithfully answer my calling. Some things--some causes, some works--resonate more deeply for me. Throughout my life, it has been the same: Writing; artwork; teaching; giving; nurturing the animals and people entrusted into my hands. God and I have pretty much reached an understanding, six-plus decades on. I do the work as I understand it; God provides the way to sustain it.

So far, that's working for me. I hope you've found your own path--the one that works for you. Blessings come, along your calling's paths. Follow your passion, when you think you've lost your way.

IMAGES: The "Seven Days of Gratitude" design is my own creation, for well or ill. If for some reason You'd like to use it, please feel free to do so, but I request attribution and a link back to this post.  Many thanks to Chellyepic on Instagram, for the "things that excite you" quote image; to Heart and Soul Coaching for the Mark Twain quote image; to The Soul Purpose Project, for the Picasso quote image; and to Awesome Quotes on Tumblr for the "purpose and passion" quote image. I deeply appreciate all of you!

ADD-Friendly Classroom Arrangements

Part I of a 3-part Series

What if ALL  your students had ADD or ADHD?

Students frequently are diagnosed with ADD or
ADHD when they are in early grades.

That may sound like a teacher’s worst nightmare—or, depending on the class, maybe you feel as if you already do have an all-ADD class!

In any case, I have felt for a long time that, whatever the reasons for recent trends of steadily-increasing diagnoses of ADD and ADHD, the fact that these students often have such a tough time in school should inspire all teachers to make their classrooms more ADD-adaptive.

I also think it is a serious mistake to label the condition a “disability,” (even if that label sells more drugs). It doesn’t have to be one. I’d rather think of it as a DIFFERENCE—a different learning style and way of perceiving the world that has characterized many of the great creative and entrepreneurial giants throughout the centuries.

Recently I sat down with my daughter Signy Gephardt, who was diagnosed with ADHD in the first grade, and who graduated from college in May. I quizzed her about “best practices” from a student’s point of view, and she shared a few ideas that all teachers may want to consider.

Suggestions for Classroom Arrangements:

A U-shaped arrangement puts
all students close to the teacher.

The ideal is to put every ADD student directly in front of the teacher—in front of his/her desk, or right in front of the podium. That would not be possible in an all-ADD class, but there are a couple of almost-as-good solutions.

A U-shaped desk arrangement around the teacher, not too many students "deep," is a good arrangement, unless you want to show a lot of PowerPoint-type presentations—in that case, a U-shape may hinder visibility for some.

A shallow rectangle arrangement, also with not too many students “deep,” works okay, and might be better for showing PowerPoints.

It also is helpful to have desks or chairs that can be re-arranged quickly and easily. As we will discuss in more detail next time, small-group discussions can be a helpful tool for keeping ADD students engaged. Reconfiguring the room to facilitate small groups can be a great distraction if the furniture is hard to move, however.

This visually stimulating classroom would be 
overwhelmingly distracting for many ADD/ADHD students.

Walls should either be blank (Signy’s warning: “BOR-rrrring!” but at least not a distraction), or covered with RELEVANT information. To be relevant, information should be focused on whatever the topic of this lesson may be. When it is relevant, it provides something for distracted minds to “bounce against” that is focused on the learning at hand and “bounces them back” on-topic.

Irrelevant information—which is any material that provides information about something other than the lesson at hand—distracts. The more attractively it is presented, the more powerfully it distracts!

In other words, all those inspirational posters about attitude, respect, or stick-to-itiveness, while meant to motivate students, are incredibly distracting to an ADD individual, unless the topic of your class work at the moment is attitude, respect, or stick-to-itiveness.

Point desks away from the windows, whenever possible.

IMAGE CREDITS: The photo of the classroom full of children is from the Buzzle website's page on "Hyperactive Children," an article on ADHD. The “U-shaped” classroom diagram came from an interesting discussion of Room Layout on the Teaching and Learning website. “The classroom is a gold mine of information," wrote the author of the cutline for the classroom with varied display of posters, etc. The photo is from the James Dinan School.

Happy European Invasion Day!

In the US we celebrated Columbus Day yesterday, but today is the traditional date.  Whenever we celebrate this holiday, I believe we ought to think back to what we were taught in school about the history of our country. I was taught that Columbus “discovered” America, despite the fact that in 1994 James Loewen was able to document fourteen earlier explorations, including several responsible for the presence of humans in the “New World” at the time Columbus arrived (See Chapter Two of his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me).

Textbooks today no longer claim “discovery”—yet they still do not talk much about the human toll of the European expansion into the New World.  It has been variously estimated that between 40 and 80% of the indigenous population died as a result of the ever-growing number of Europeans who brought their diseases, weapons, cultural concepts of property, and policies of forced assimilation.  But how much emphasis do we give in our schools to a New World Holocaust that cost tens of millions of lives?

Do we tell first graders that Columbus was welcomed, and even rescued from shipwreck, by the Taíno people—and that he then went home to get more ships and soldiers, so he could enslave them to work in gold mines?  Not usually!  But it’s what he did.

For the Americans who already lived here, the arrival of the Europeans was nothing short of a catastrophe.  Yet I’ve seen it defended as a source of salvation (via Christianity), as “Manifest Destiny,” or as an “inevitable” outcome that it’s really a waste of time to fret over, now.

I think we owe it to our students (descendants from both sides of that struggle) to fret a bit.  We should tell more truth, less myth.  Happy Columbus Day.