March 05 - Discipline

First day of week ten...a rain run.

Proverbs 10:17

10 He who heeds discipline shows the way to life, but whoever ignores correction leads others astray.

Once a week I have an assignment for my students that requires them to think and respond with either writing or drawing. True, I may be the only physical education teacher in the world who does this, but I think it's important. I like to call it "Extravagant Minds", but none of my students would know it by that name. The deal is, after 10 weeks, if each student has completed all assignments correctly, they will receive a 100 quiz grade to help their grade out. If they don't do it, well, they don't get anything. It doesn't hurt them, but it does help them.

Yesterday, I quoted this Proverb to them and asked them to respond with a 5 sentence response. No, I did not reveal that it was a verse from the bible...for the sake of keeping my career in tact. I got great responses from some of the kids, while others didn't understand what the word "heed" meant and some thought that this one verse was a poem. Others simply responded with repeating sentences, off topic responses, but of course I am thankful that no one drew pictures referring to tobacco products.

What does this verse and activity for the students have to do with gym? Well...I could answer this in multiple ways, but I will go with one certain answer. Some students have decided that they are going to be leaders. Not leaders in a good sense, but a negative (too cool for school) kind of way. When this happens, as a teacher, you can see the so-called leader beginning to pick up little followers here and there. They don't really care about these followers, but they just want a support group. At some point, the ride ends though...

Towards the end of class Friday, a student walked by and I mentioned to her that I liked what she had written in response to the quote. She said thanks and we began to talk a little. In her response (which was over 10 sentences...) she mentioned that you should be a leader instead of a follower. I agreed with her, to some extent. I added in, well it might not be so bad to be a follower, as long as what you are following is the right thing. I tried to steer her in the direction that if you are a Christian, we should all be following the same leader. Yes, we may have pastors and leaders within the church, but ultimately we follow one of two paths. One, being a true and lively path being God. The other, a path to death and sin, being the world. Of course, I didn't go this in depth with the conversation, but hopefully a seed was planted.

A handful of students will be resilient to completing an assignment, but overall, my goal is to make these students think and hopefully if it won't change their life, it might alter their day for the better. There is still hope for a fallen world, but it is up to us as Christians to follow God's will for our lives and lead others towards Him and life.

Who do you follow?