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Random archive letters from other years part 5 |
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Build Briges to others Friday, December 8, 2006
Good day, Sequoyah Great Ones! How long should a gift last? If it is a gift you really like, does it make a difference if you have it a short time, maybe brief like a bear hug, or if you have it a long time, like a photograph treasured for years? What if you are the giver? Do you want the person receiving the gift to take care of it? Do you want them to experience joy from it forever? My Christmas gifts from 5th grade were all memorable. I remember getting a tetherball and pole. The whole neighborhood loved that gift. I received some great books and a couple of board games. The big gift for me from my parents though was a remote control airplane. Now remember that I lived in California at the time, so the weather outside was beautiful. I wanted to go out and fly the plane immediately. Never mind breakfast. Never mind getting dressed. I wanted to see my new plane fly. Well, after a little while my dad finally said let’s go to the school grounds and fly your plane. He reminded me that it would need lots of space and the school property was perfect for it. Of course, I wanted to be the one to control the takeoff and fly it for a while, but Dad said he needed to show me how to do it. He primed the engine and I think looking back at it, my heart was going ninety to nothing and back. I was never so excited on December 25th as I was at that time. The engine was running and my dad gave it throttle and the plane started moving forward and gathered speed and went faster and faster until it left the ground and was flying. I was pumped and running around watching it climb in the sky. It seemed like a miracle for a toy to be flying. At first it circled the school field, then my dad made it fly down and back up and back down and then he waved the wings back and forth. My father was fantastic at flying my plane. I stood there wondering how he got so good at it. He said, “Jeff, watch your plane do a complete loop!” He revved it up and made it climb so high and then over itself and then it reached the peak of the loop and was upside down. It started its descent at an amazing speed. It was remarkable how fast it was flying down and curving back around. Except it was coming down too fast and it couldn’t pull up out of its descent. I stopped moving as I watched with horror my new plane smash into the school playground nose first. I know that it really didn’t explode, but in my heart it had, just like the planes crashing in all the war movies I had ever seen. Pieces flew in all directions and then the buzzing sound was gone and it was silent on the elementary school grounds. I was stunned. I couldn’t say anything. I wanted to cry, but all I did was walk over to the scene of the accident with my father. Dad told to me to get the box that I had pulled it out of just minutes before the test flight and consequent crash. Together, without any conversation, we quietly picked up the pieces, placed them into the box turned coffin, and then went to the truck to drive home. When we got to the house, we sat in the car for a moment. My dad could hear me sniffing a bit and he turned and said to me, “Jeff, I’m sorry son.” I didn’t say anything, but instead gathered up my box of plane pieces and went into the house. We had a big holiday dinner that afternoon. My dad helped put my tetherball pole up in the backyard, and my friends came over and we played until the sun went down. Before I went to bed that night, I walked up to my dad and said, “It’s okay that you busted my plane up, I thought you flew it great until you crashed it. Thanks for saying you were sorry.” He hugged me and I went to bed. Now, I can look back on that experience and realize that my dad was trying to make it special for me at the school and he did because he gave me an amazing memory to share with others. It was also the first time I remember my dad needing to apologize to me, and he chose to do that. Listen to this quote.
People are lonely because they build walls, instead of bridges.
My dad built a wonderful bridge to my life that day, December 25, 1966. I encourage all of you to look for ways to build bridges to the people that you care for the most in your family. Maybe when it seems that all that is important about you is crashing, that is when you need to look to build a bridge. I challenge you to always be sensitive to whether you are allowing a wall to be built in a relationship or a golden bridge to be created. With words that I would like you to consider and reflect upon, make yours an exceptional life – or not. The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. Please choose wisely. ________________________________________ The Importance of Community Monday, November 27, 2006
Good day, Sequoyah Community! I hope that you had a great holiday break! I enjoyed all of the time I had with my family. Last Friday night my wife and I went to a Class A football game. The Pawnee Black Bears hosted the Okeene Whippets in the quarterfinal round of the state football playoffs. Both of the teams had perfect 12-0 records. The final score was different than what I was hoping because Okeene won the gridiron battle 31-21. They will move on to the next round and Pawnee’s football season is over. I sat in the grandstands with a thousand other people and didn’t know a single one of them, except my wife. I could view across the football field another thousand people and they were strangers as well. While watching these two football teams facing each other, I recognized that they were two separate and distinct communities connected through the game itself. I observed several things that are characteristics of good communities. Both of these communities are small with fewer students in their whole district than we have just in our school. I got to Pawnee several hours before the game and watched them set up before the contest. Men from the Lion’s Club helped with the parking of cars and greeted the friends and strangers that arrived. They smiled and welcomed the people from Okeene and provided them important information. A man actually waited for the Okeene team bus to arrive and showed them where to park. The people from these two small communities related to each other in an amiable way. The stadium was small, too small for the number of people present. Everyone sat in close quarters to make room for as many as possible in the bleachers. There were individuals standing all the way around the fence two to three deep watching the game as well. From where Susan and I were sitting, it seemed that everyone in Pawnee knew everyone in Pawnee. And the same was true with the traveling fans from Okeene. The game was spirited and hard fought. Fans cheered for their teams with energy and enthusiasm, and yet when a player was hurt in the second half all of the people on each side of the field demonstrated concern. After plays ended, it was not unusual to witness opposing players helping each other off the ground. Don’t misunderstand. The teams played hard against each other, but there were signs of great sportsmanship from both teams the whole evening. What was the importance of community to the players? The two communities were at the game to support the kids. They wore the right school colors and cheered the right cheers. There was very little booing, but there was a lot of noise making. After winning, Okeene fans celebrated with their young men by congratulating them and patting them on their backs. After losing, Pawnee fans hurt with their young men by consoling them and yes, patting them on the backs as well. Listen to these wonderful words from Noah benShea:
The moments that we share with others remind us that we are neighbors in time.
Even though I had no connection with any one other than my wife at the game last Friday night, I had the perception that I was a part of both the Pawnee community and the Okeene community. I shared that evening with a couple of thousand strangers and yet, I felt like a neighbor to them. We need to take to heart that lesson of importance of community. We are in a constant effort to create community within the walls of this building. There are over 1100 of us finding opportunities to celebrate together or finding possibilities to learn together or finding ways to share positive experiences that will turn into long term endearing memories. And I know for a fact, that if a major hurt occurred, we would, as a community, pull together and support one another, consoling one another as needed. The moments that you share with each other and with the teachers of Sequoyah should remind you that you’re in this life together and have a responsibility to each other as a neighbor. And most of my life I have understood that you should love your neighbor as you do yourself. With words that I would like you to consider and reflect upon, make yours an exceptional life – or not. The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. Please choose wisely.
Choices Are Who You Are Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Good day, Sequoyah Choice-makers! Each day when a letter from me is read to you, I end it the exact same way. I always remind you that the power to choose is the greatest power you have. So just how powerful are choices? I can give you a line of connected choices as an example. Try to follow along closely. In February of 1955, my parents chose to have a second child, and so on November 4, 1955 I was born. They chose to live in Blackwell, Oklahoma, until the summer of 1965, when they chose to move their family to Santa Maria, California, for a better chance at improving their life. That choice led to my father starting a successful business in heavy equipment operation, a chance that probably would not have come about in Oklahoma. My parents choosing to move to the Golden State gave me my teenage years in a completely different environment than if I had stayed in Blackwell. I don’t know if that was good or bad, I am just aware that it was definitely different. When I graduated high school, I knew that I wanted to come back to Oklahoma to go to college. I made the choice to attend the University of Oklahoma over OSU and UCO. I could have been happy and enjoyed a good education at any of the three schools, but for whatever reason I chose OU. I chose to date and then marry a girl from Edmond, although I had never lived in this town. But my choice to marry someone who lived here made it reasonable to assume that I might find a good life staying in Edmond. While a student at OU I chose to do my student teaching at Sequoyah, even though there were dozens of other schools I could have chosen. I knew no one in the school prior to my first day of walking on the Sequoyah campus, but my choice led to the formulation of friendships and an idea that I wanted to teach daily at the school. I chose to accept a job teaching English when it was offered. Eleven years later, I chose to accept the job offer to be the principal of the school. In the last 18 years, as principal of Sequoyah, I have made thousands upon thousands of choices that have shaped who I am and who I will be when I choose to some day leave my work behind. Now, why did I share that line of choices? It’s because there is so much I wanted and still want to do with my life, but there is not enough time for all I desire. That’s why we make choices. Every time we do so, whether we want to admit it or not, we are prioritizing our desires for our own life. Listen to what Fred Rogers (Mr. Rogers) said about choices.
You rarely have time for everything that you want in this life, so you need to make choices. And hopefully, your choices can come from a deep sense of who you are.
The greatest example I can give you about how one person’s choices may impact another person is this. My wife and I chose to live and raise our children in Edmond. Because my parents live in California, we knew that even if our children saw their grandparents twice a year, that it was only going to be about 30-35 times they would interact during the time they were children. That is not what we really wanted, but our choice drove that fact. Our choice to live 1500 miles away from my parents limited the access they had to two of their grandchildren. You will make choices that will direct your life down a particular path. Hopefully all of your choices will be made with deliberate thought and they will be supported by a deep sense of who you are. With words that I would like you to consider and reflect upon, make yours an exceptional life – or not. The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. Please choose wisely.
Can You Hear Me Now? Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Good day, Sequoyah Listeners! In 5th grade, Robert Lloyd and I were in to inventing things. You may remember Robert was my friend that tricked me into dropping my books in front of the school bus. He was also the friend that buried a nickel with me to be blood brothers rather than cutting ourselves. We spent a lot of time together trying to come up with new things to do. One of our inventions was a telephone communicator. We used two coffee cans, two big buttons and about 50 feet of tough, thin wire. One of the lessons we had listened to in 5th grade science was about vibrations. We knew that if we connected the two coffee cans with the wire, we might be able to talk to each other. We turned the cans opened end down and punched a small hole with a hammer and nail. After threading the thin wire through the hole, we tied the wire off using the two buttons. Our cans were connected and we were ready to discover the transmission of our voices over a wire. We walked about 50 feet apart and Robert put his coffee can to his ear as I lifted my can to my mouth. I said, “Robert, do you hear me?” He yelled back that he could hear something; he just didn’t know what I had said. I told him that we had to pull the wire tighter. So we did, and I said the same thing. He was excited because he could pick out his name in whatever it was that I said. I told him again that we had to pull the wire tighter still. We were pulling the two cans apart so hard that we were actually leaning away from each other. I said again, “Robert, do you hear me?” and he shouted back, “Jeff, you said, Robert do you hear me?” I shouted that he was right and I wanted to say something else. He put the can back to his ear, and I said pull it as tight as possible. I put my mouth to my can to say something else; when suddenly, we had a major malfunction. Both of us were on our backs. Robert was bleeding from a large half-moon gash on the side of his head and I had a bleeding, cut lip and chipped tooth. Can you guess what happened? Our wire snapped, and we both were injured. Our line of communication was literally broken. Robert ended up requiring half a dozen stitches and I had to go to the dentist. Listen to this anonymous quote.
The most important good listening habit is to totally concentrate on what the person is saying.
I obviously don’t want anyone to be hurt like Robert or me. What I do encourage everyone to do though is develop the good listening habit of total concentration on what a person is saying when speaking to you. Do your best, and focus your listening. “Can you hear me now?” should not need to be asked in a class. That phrase should stay with the television commercials. With words that I would like you to consider and reflect upon, make yours an exceptional life – or not. The greatest power that a person possesses is the power to choose. Please choose wisely.
-Melodic Time- · Mon Jun 16, 2008 @ 04:58am · 0 Comments |
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