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Lesson 5: When Our Best Laid Plans Get Snowed In

This post originally appeared on Jody’s humor blog about her experiences in education www.lessonslearnedinthelittleredschoolhouse.com where you can subscribe to the Lessons by email.

By nature, I am a planner. The positive aspect is that it helps keep me organized. The back side is that I am internally inflexible when things change.

I confess, I churn at times.

One day I planned to teach Study Skills to the 6th graders. It was a big snow day, and it fell on the March primary – a strange day for Texas, indeed.

I normally go to each of the 6th grade classes separately. By a fluke, all three teachers were out sick, and I was told the subs were on their way.

No problem! I put all the students in one room. We took prayer requests, and I happen to casually suggest we pray about the primary in Texas since it could potentially affect the outcome of the November election.

“What’s a primary?”

Well, you don’t ask a question like that to a history-political buff…scratch those ‘ole Study Skill plans. Plan B, and this time I was the one flexed.

We were knee-deep into an exciting discussion when the subs arrived. I asked if we could keep it going, and they graciously agreed.

We discussed primaries in general, this one in particular, the potential affect this one would have on the election, and the long-term residual effect on their lives.

“What? How could a primary today affect us?” they questioned.

We were off and running again.

All the While…

As they talked, asked questions, discussed, and debated with earnest, my eyes periodically looked out at the most beautiful football field…covered in 6” of fresh, soft snow.

I gave the students a 5-minute break and had a mini-discussion with the subs.

We now had plan C.

“If you can tip-toe without a sound all the way down the hall, down the stairs, I will take you to the football field to play for 20 minutes right before lunch. One sound from you and the deal is off. Know why? We will have the entire school playing Pied Piper and coming in right behind us. This is just for you. Got it?”

You never saw a more silent group of 60 students.

We tip-toed outside, got to the field…and let them loose.

What joy! They ran, threw snowballs, laughed, made snow-angels, and did everything that Texas kids only get to do about every two years…at best!

Then we gathered ourselves, lined up, and walked into lunch as if we had just been to a serious, academic lecture.

Our little secret was kept.

Until May that is… I took lots of pictures and showed them at their 6th grade graduation.

Even Super Bowl Plans Can Be Snowed In

This week is the first time that Dallas has housed the Super Bowl. The hype and preparations have been ‘over the top’. Plans have been in place for many months, people have worked countless hours, parties and performances are percolating!

Yes, there was a ‘back-up’ plan for the unlikely event of a sprinkling of snow or one day of ice. But no one in their wildest dreams could’ve imagined the Arctic Antics that raised havoc with the best laid plans of mice and men…and Jerry Jones.

In my nearly 40 years of living in Texas and being involved in education, I have no memory of seeing this happen. And here we are, on the world’s stage for the Super Bowl.

Fun activities got cancelled, or limited at best. Special events at schools and churches for kids related to the Super Bowl got nixed. With ice and single-digit temperatures for four days, it wasn’t much fun to play outside.

Have Your Plans Ever Gone Adrift?

Just as snow and ice can change the best of plans of the most organized teams of people, we can hit a brick wall in our plans.

Or, in looking back, we can see it was a detour to where God wanted us all along.

We have a choice in how we view it.

In the next Lesson, I begin the chronology of the schools I have been a part of over the past 40 years. It’s a journey. Often the roadblocks and setbacks are the eject buttons to get us to the next place in the journey.

Just as there can be both magic and misery with snow, we can see the delays and disappointments as denials, or we can see them as the detours to our ultimate destiny.

It’s all a matter of perspective. Our attitudes can make us or break us when our plans change.

When we get outside our comfort zone of plans and predictable outcomes, life lessons can be learned along with academics.

Those students learned more about primaries that day than any text book in later years could’ve taught, because it was real, happening now, and applicable to their lives. And it was snow-capped with an unexpected experience, rich in their memory bank.

Brain research says that when we engage the learner with episodic experiences, learning moves to long-term.

Those 6th graders definitely did so on that snowy day in Texas for the March primary of ’08.

I might not flex often enough, but I am so glad I did that day.