WOG’s 2 Cents by Brian D. King
The best compliment we can ever get is that our calling has made a positive difference in someone else’s life.
The last campfire of school is always fun, sad, and heartwarming. We reflect back on the year laughing about the funniest things that happened, the “coolest” skills learned, and experiences the students will never forget.
At one such campfire, a student said, “Last September, I hated to read and really hated to write, now I love it.” All the students agreed and shared their own testimony on the subject. I could see in their faces and hear in their voices how heartfelt their words were. If we accomplished only one thing this year, development of a love for reading and writing would have made the challenges worth the effort.
But there are many experiences, challenges, successes, and skills that students will never forget. When teachers or parents tell me that without grades students have no incentive to learn, these teens prove them wrong.
Learning is a habit and the love for learning is the reward. At the last campfire, no one talked about what they had planned for the summer, but rather what they wanted to learn tomorrow. It sounded like they had a School Bucket List and they only had one day to do it. They are not eager to start their summer, only saddened the year was coming to a close.
I shared with them that during Christmas break of the school’s first year, I got an email from a 13-year-old student that read, “Why is school closed for two weeks, one week is too long.”
This student mindset was different than when I taught public school. During my years of teaching public school curriculum it was too often asked, “Why do we have to learn this sh*t?” Immediately, I learned in our new school model the daily question was, “Can you show me how you did that? You made it look easy.”
As we reflected on the past year of no grades, desks, classrooms, bell schedules, worksheets, tests, or grades, the warm feelings they had the last night, their love for learning and of each other is what they will remember.
Our extended camps are the same way. After a day of swimming in a dark blue copper lake, during the last campfire I asked, “Tomorrow is our last full day, what do you want to do?” Consensus was to explore a copper mine from the Civil War. After the spelunking, we were eating lunch and one student said, “Yesterday while swimming, I believed that had been the best day of my life, but today hiking in that tunnel that nobody had been in since ‘63 I realized that today was the best day of my life.”
Yes, the best compliment we can ever get is that our calling has made a positive difference in someone else’s life.
