Coaching coaxing

Sometimes I compare coaching to eternal ideas.

I'm a coach. I have 19 girls to worry about, care about, and try to progress in their sport. I lose sleep over them. I laugh with them. I hope for them and I cry with them.

I make them condition. They hate it. I know this. But I also know they want to win at competition. I know that they need to progress if they are going to win. I know they need to push themselves and get stronger. I know they'll be much more proud of themselves if they do. I know all this. And I assume they know this. And yet, they complain. They request not to do it. I get that. It's hard. It hurts. It's tiring. It's not fun. But... It will help. I think, instead of them complaining can't they just see how I'm not doing this to punish them? I'm doing it to help them?

Then it hit me. Heavenly Fathers motives and tactics are no different. He sees our potential. He worries about us. Loves us. Rejoices and cries with us. He too puts us through hard things, knowing we won't like it, but knowing what it will in the end produce.

This is mercy. Not always giving us what we want. But giving us what we need. So that when all is said and done, we accomplish something greater than we had originally intended. With His help, guidance and encouragement we become strong, faster, more disciplined. Patient, understanding, and simply more. More than what we were to begin with.

So to my team and my students, never will I stop pushing you and asking hard things. You deserve to see progress in yourself. You deserve to get stronger. You deserve more.

They have no idea...

I really wonder how my students would change in the classroom if they had any idea how much I thought about them while not in the classroom.

I can recall two instances of sharing with a struggling student that I had been thinking of them and seeing their whole countenance change instantly. Suddenly, they told me everything. Nothing was too personal. They trusted me immediately. Granted, we had spent some time together in the classroom, but to see how much that meant to them really shows me how much we all long to be important to someone.

Over the past many years, I've learned to share my life with the Lord. I wonder if I had the privilege of being married if instead I'd get to share my life with my husband, but since I've not been blessed with that yet, I share my life with the Savior and our Heavenly Father. Yes I pray and talk to them. But more than that I try and recall moments where we can share in the same emotions. I find this makes all the difficult times so much more bare able, and I also believe that it is the root of the atonement. Become one with Christ.

So with that in mind, I think of those moments when I know the Lord is thinking of me. Like my students, it's those small moments he takes the time to make me feel important that I'm grateful for. I pray that I may follow his example and continue to help make others around me feel important and thought of.

On the other hand, I tried to reach out to so many students. So many that had the look of hard and hopelessness ingrained into their countenance. (They're in high school!!) And how much I just wanted them to trust me. How much I wanted them just to allow me to care about them, even just a little bit. Some, just couldn't find the motivation, others fought my efforts, at full strength. What were they afraid off? Why would they not trust me, that what I was encouraging them to do was for their good?!

Oh the pain that the Savior and our Heavenly Father must feel. If I feel pain for a student choosing to be stubborn in a high school history class, I can only pretend to fathom the pain they feel for one of their children choosing to stay hard hearted. In those moments I mourn with them. In those moments I feel closer to them.

How much would I change in this life, if I knew how much our Lord and Father thought about me?

Welcome

I'll be using this blog to document all the highs and lows of my professional career as a teacher in a public school. I've only had one year of full time teaching experience, so I'm not about to attempt to tell teachers how to teach better, but more to glory in all the awesome things that I get to come away with that make me a better person. That is my hope. To document the beauty of this profession. For myself, and anyone else interested for that matter.

Year two starts in three weeks. Before then, I'll try and catch up from last year and some things I came away with.

I'm not going to apologize also for how many times I relate an experience to our relationship with Heavenly Father, or how applying my knowledge of Jesus Christ helps me from day to day. So don't expect me to separate the two. It cannot be done.