Today's guest speaker said, “The strength of the wolf is in the pack and the strength of
the pack is in the wolf.”
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| Zach Galifinasasdadasdfaewaregagasdakas |
Sam Glenn was the keynote speaker at today’s
district wide kick-off meeting. His focus was on our attitude. There were two
main items on his checklist for how to keep up a good attitude. The first was
humor. Earlier he had used the wolf quotation. Naturally, when someone mentions
wolves and humor in the same hour, I think back to the wolfpack from “The Hangover.”
I wonder what challenges I will face in regards to age-appropriate humor. Later
during the performance Sam joked about ‘becoming a motivational speaker’ and ‘living in a van down by the river.’ My mentor teacher thought aloud
about how many other people in the room would get that joke. So, age-appropriate
humor means, not just keeping away from the vulgar or the EtOH references, but also being able to relate to people two decades younger than
me.
The second point was about enthusiasm and drive. Enthusiasm
is the difference between good and great. There was a talk about never giving
up. I love Churchill and the never surrender attitude. I just
worry about never giving up. This is something that I have been torn by all
summer long. I've been conflicted by a desire to chase after a dream and a
second completely rational argument do no more harm. It reminds me of a student
named Larry (Not his real name). I met Larry at the middle school this summer.
When he talked about growing he, mentioned his dream of playing in the NBA. The
things is, Larry isn't very tall. In fact he was the shortest kid in his grade. Too be honest, Larry isn't even that good at basketball. I got to watch
Larry play a couple of times over the summer and he didn't stand out. How do we
balance enthusiasm with the real world? Larry isn't going to play in
the NBA and there are there are things in my life that I will never achieve. The question is, how do we separate the improbable from the impossible?
How do we separate something that will always be out of reach with something that
is just a few steps down the road?
Seriously, these aren't rhetorical questions. Does anybody
have any ideas?
In case you were wondering, today’s meeting started off with
us watching a scene from “Caddyshack” which, for reasons unbeknownst to me the
film included French subtitles. So, I learned a little bit of French (Hence the title to this blog post)
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