We all make mistakes. The question is, do we learn from them? This month, we are looking at how principals can do a better job as administrators, how teachers can help their students learn from their math mistakes, how parents can help their children live according to a biblical worldview, and how we can all witness better to those around us.
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What Great Principals Do Differently: Twenty Things That Matter Most - Todd Whitaker
What is this resource about? Whitaker provides 20 specific strategies that help principals be effective in their roles. These strategies include suggestions such as: treat everyone with respect every day, all the time; focus on behaviours, then beliefs; be the filter; base your decisions on what your best teachers think; set expectations; and deal with negative or ineffective staff members.
Why is it important? It is not always easy to be an effective principal. Much of what principals do is based on what they have learned through trial and error. Having some guidance as to strategies that make one more effective is a great support.
What should I do? This is not a book that needs to be read cover to cover. Focus on a specific strategy, read up on it, and seek to apply it in the coming week. Once you have successfully implemented it several times, add another strategy to your repertoire.
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Learning By Mistake - Emma Chiappetta
What is this resource about? Chiappetta is a math teacher and has provided twelve specific strategies on how to help students turn their mistakes into learning opportunities. Some of these strategies include: mistake journals; predictive games; mistake murals; and test corrections and revisions.
Why is it important? Students often feel humiliated when they make a mistake. Helping to normalize mistakes will also help students learn from the mistakes they have made. Once students lose their fear of mistakes, they will start to focus on what they can learn from their own, and others’, mistakes.
What should I do? Read through the book and choose one or two strategies to implement. Some strategies may be easier than others depending on the subject matter and the grade level.
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How Should We Then Live? - Francis A. Schaeffer
What is this resource about? Francis Schaeffer, one of the first Christians to really talk about what a biblical worldview is and how to develop a biblical worldview, provides a brief history of western thought and culture and shows how our culture today is degrading the more we move away from following God’s Word. He starts with Rome and ends with a description of what Western culture is like in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Why is it important? We will not know why our culture is the way it is without having an understanding of how we got to this stage. Schaeffer does a great job in summarizing the cultural impact of the Roman Empire, the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the various revolutions, the two World Wars, and our (relatively) modern culture. With this description, we can see not only why we are where we are (culturally speaking), but also where we are going through the mid 2000s.
What should I do? As you read this book, think through how you would respond to the various ideas culture has introduced over the last two to three decades. Schaeffer wrote this book in the early 1970s; how do we get from where he was in the 1970s to where we are in the mid 2020s?
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You Never Meet Anyone By Chance - Ernie Klassen
Who is this resource about? This is a collection of evangelistic conversations Ernie Klassen had with a variety of people as he travelled through Germany and Canada. Ernie Klassen came to the Lord as a 16 year old and later travelled to Germany to found Bibelschule Brake, the largest evangelical Bible school in Germany. Klassen was an evangelist like few others before him. He was able to turn almost any conversation into a gospel presentation, even when he was stopped by the police or held up at customs. Many conversations are easy enough to imitate and open conversations with people we come into contact with.
How can I pray? Pray for opportunities and openings to share the gospel with those we come into contact with; God will make a way for us to share the gospel.