Planning is Part of My Ministry

As I sit here (...during my planning time, whoops), I wanted to touch on something that has been resonating with me a lot lately. I am not the normal, type A teacher. Sometimes I wish that I was, but I'm a little bit different, and that's just the way it is.

If I'm being honest, when I look at my teaching qualities, my strengths fall on loving, and a little less on planning ahead. But as it turns out, teaching in it's nature, demands a lot of planning time. This doesn't come easily for me. What comes easy for me is intentionality in relationships & focusing all of my attention on who I'm with and how I can serve them. So naturally, I gravitate towards this.

However, it has become apparent to me, that in all facets of my life (even outside of teaching), planning must be a part of my ministry. 

Without vision, the people perish. Without well thought out plans, my classroom becomes chaos rather than an environment for loving & nurturing. Without clear intentions in friendships, those relationships fall to the wayside. Without a vision for your future, goals remain unachieved and forgotten.

When I set aside vital blocks of time to organize and itemize (as painful as it may be to get started), I am able to pour so much more into my students in the times when we're together. That extra hour in the evening helps me to get ten fold more out of my hours during the day.

Anyway, that's just my tidbit on teaching (and a little bit of life) for today. 

I've got to go double check my plans for math class this afternoon! ;)

"Begin with the End in Mind"

So this is my friend, Suzanne. She's an intern from Holland at our school and she'll be here until June. We both speak English. So of course, we became friends right away.

I've discovered that in Europe, people regularly do interesting things like...stay in hostels. So, it was naturally her duty to introduce me to my first hostel experience the first weekend that we met! So Friday morning, we got up at  4AM, jumped on a bus from San Jose to Puerto Viejo, and suffered leg cramps and neck pains for four hours in the Tico sized bus seats.

Before this trip, my idea of a hostel was not very optimistic. My thoughts were uncomfortable beds, dirty, bland gray rooms, and a little bit sketchy.

Well as it turns out, that's not how they do it in Costa Rica. (Ok maybe it was a little dirty)

See for yourself....

We stayed at Rocking J's.

Where we slept. We paid $7 a night for this hammock luxury.

So, we spent the weekend relaxing at the beach, trying not to get swept away by the red flag waves.
Suzanne tried to teach me how to surf. Unfortunately, I can't really say with a guilt free conscious that I actually surfed...I only made it past my knees a time or two. Maybe next time.

In the evenings, we had the pleasure of meeting a smattering of people from around the globe. I talked to people from Holland (no not just Suzanne!), Sweden, Germany, Canada, Uruguay, and a few a little bit closer to home- Montana & New York. 

The hostel had a kitchen so we gathered a large group of us together and all pitched in for a cheap dinner. Suzanne, our German friend, and I worked together to cook the "best meal" these traveling guys said they had "had in months". I'm glad the we were able to help satisfy a few bellies!

One thing that I discovered through many conversations that weekend was the amount of people who were "trying to find themselves" through traveling and seeing "where life took them". Some of these people had been on the road for months or just at the hostel "chilling" (and drinking...and smoking...) for weeks. I was burdened by the stories of people who were trying to escape disappointment or dissatisfaction with their lives at home. 

Don't get me wrong, I love to travel. That's why I'm in Costa Rica. But I was reminded of the value of having a purpose and vision for your life. It made me reevaluate my life and where I'm headed.

Our school is centered around Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Happy Kids (I'll talk about this more later). But- one of the habits that we've been teaching our kids at school is "begin with the end in mind". As 7 & 8 year olds, my class understood more about setting a purpose and planning ahead than most of those adults did. It is my desire that if those kids decide that they want to be something or go somewhere, they will commit to it and not end up 10-15 years down the road saying to themselves, "how did I end up here?"