Thank you for writing! This is an easy theme for me; that is, it seems to have worked the past 27 years with the SECRETS program and life. I am also impressed when someone is ailing physically and/or spiritually and they are called upon to do something. With the SECRETS staff, my request was to always bring your best effort when you entered the classroom. If someone thought they just couldn't do that, I asked them to call me or someone else to sub, because I believed and still do that the 5th. graders deserved our best. It is pretty easy to do our best when we're at 100%, pretty amazing to attempt to surmount our woes when we're not. In sports I remember a baseball pitcher in the World Service pitch the game of his life despite pain and blood oozing from his ankle. Or the famous Kurt Gibson pitch-hitting for a home run despite him having only one healthy leg. People going on stage and performing their heart out despite fevers, trauma, or other deep challenges confronting them. How did Beethoven overcome his near total deafness to create the world's greatest classical music? How did Diana Nyad swim from Florida to Cuba (100 miles!) at age 60 when she couldn't accomplish that feat at age 28? Our minds, our spirits can compensate for physical ailments. And a writer's Soul can overcome severe adversity to write words of greatness, and perhaps that's when the most significant writing occurs!
Thank you for writing! This is an easy theme for me; that is, it seems to have worked the past 27 years with the SECRETS program and life. I am also impressed when someone is ailing physically and/or spiritually and they are called upon to do something. With the SECRETS staff, my request was to always bring your best effort when you entered the classroom. If someone thought they just couldn't do that, I asked them to call me or someone else to sub, because I believed and still do that the 5th. graders deserved our best. It is pretty easy to do our best when we're at 100%, pretty amazing to attempt to surmount our woes when we're not. In sports I remember a baseball pitcher in the World Service pitch the game of his life despite pain and blood oozing from his ankle. Or the famous Kurt Gibson pitch-hitting for a home run despite him having only one healthy leg. People going on stage and performing their heart out despite fevers, trauma, or other deep challenges confronting them. How did Beethoven overcome his near total deafness to create the world's greatest classical music? How did Diana Nyad swim from Florida to Cuba (100 miles!) at age 60 when she couldn't accomplish that feat at age 28? Our minds, our spirits can compensate for physical ailments. And a writer's Soul can overcome severe adversity to write words of greatness, and perhaps that's when the most significant writing occurs!