Our plans changed today at the last minute. Melissa and I were supposed to be driving three hours north to celebrate my aunt and uncle’s 60th wedding anniversary all afternoon.  This is my mom’s side of the family and we were really looking forward to catching up with all the various families coming in from all over. Ever since my mom passed away, these sort of opportunities are more precious than ever. Not to even mention the fact that SIXTY years of solid, godly marriage? Yes, that deserves celebration! But then … Covid.  I don’t have it and nobody in…

Like most Americans, for many years now I have known my smartphone as one of my closest companions. It is always there to make me laugh, keep me connected, or distract me from worries. It’s the last thing I look at each night and the first thing I look at each morning.  But lately I have been noticing more distance between me and the phone. And it is nothing I set out specifically to do. It is largely a byproduct of some of my new habits.  First, I am making sure that my morning coffee time is spent with Scripture…

This evening I am once again fighting the sinus infection that never dies. It hibernates in the shadows for weeks at a time and then creeps right back in where it isn’t wanted. It’s particularly inconvenient tonight because I am needing to do some planning and grading for my classes and, more importantly, it is Samuel’s last evening with us all before he heads off to college. (Which also means that tomorrow I need to be alert enough to make it through a day of teaching and then drive the almost two hours to Muncie, Indiana and back, with enough…

I cannot wrap my head around some aspects of the modern junior high experience, making it difficult for me to reach and teach some students. How can a person be just 13 years old and yet be Thirteen short years on this planet and this is where they find themselves? I can’t help but wonder what forces of evil lie hidden in the background.  To be clear, this is a small percentage of the student body. But it doesn’t take too many kids in this state to completely alter the atmosphere of any classroom – or the school as a…

I might be a little premature in sharing tips on overcoming procrastination, because I am still working on this aspect of my life, but I am pulling these tips from solid sources and I have been testing them out myself and finding some successes.  Here’s the advice I gave my 7th grade student who figured she would “debate” herself over the weekend regarding cleaning her bedroom: Start small. Give yourself permission to do the smallest possible thing to make some little progress on the room. Clean for 2 minutes. Or clean one small area – the desk top, for example. …

Third period each day I teach “Communications” to a handful of 7th graders. They are a really neat class so far.  Yesterday I asked one of these students what she had planned for the weekend.  She said, “Well, I SHOULD clean up my bedroom, but I might just debate with myself.” What did she mean by debating herself? “I debate myself over my room. I don’t want to clean it, but I feel really good when it is clean.” I thought that was incredibly perceptive, especially for such a young person: Procrastination involves debating myself. If procrastination is a habit,…

I have a tendency to overestimate what my 8th graders are capable of reading or discussing. And I often assume they know certain vocabulary words only to find out that they have no clue. The funny thing is, I am not the only one who overestimates what they already know. They do too! Two examples from today: 1) A young lady was wearing a Playboy shirt. It was under a sweatshirt for most of the day, but she came to my class after gym and was too warm to keep the sweatshirt on. She willingly covered up again when I…