Byron's Babbles

Last week during one of my Focused Leader Academy gatherings we did an activity around “mantras” as part of our core values series. We all have a mantra whether we know it or not. Those things we believe in and the values we always act on. Others we serve even develop mantras that they use when describing us. Mine, from when I was a principal, was “Make it so!” I always wanted everyone in the school to be empowered to think through what they needed so when they told me what they intended to do I could say, “Make it so!”

One of the participants at Silver Creek School Corporation last week, Grant Condon, was really engaged in this activity and it even created a productive struggle for him. He knew what he valued and what he believed he displayed as a teacher leader, but was having trouble putting it all together – he wanted to get it right. He asked if he could take the development of his mantra as homework. The teacher in me was loving it; he was asking for homework. I love it!

True to his word, Grant did the homework and sent his thoughts to me. His work on the mantra was outstanding and I asked his permission to share. 🎤 Get ready for the mic drop, because his response is a great lesson for us all. Here it is:

Good morning,

I have been thinking a lot about the mantra that I could not decide on during our last meeting on Wednesday. I wanted to focus on effort for it, which I am, but I think I was too set on having the word “effort” in it. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I already know of the perfect one, and it doesn’t have the word “effort” in it.

When I was on the 5th grade basketball team we had two coaches. One of them was my dad and the other was the dad of one of my best friends. The two of them taught us a lot of fundamentals and foundations of basketball, but they both used the same quote all of the time. In life, you hear a lot of people that say “practice makes perfect”, but they made a twist to that quote that I really like. They always told us that “practice makes permanent”. 

I love that for my mantra because it goes right along with giving effort. If you practice by sitting there and doing nothing, then that’s what you are going to bring to the table during a game(or test). Developing habits is what we do in practice. I like to think of classwork and homework as the practice, and the tests/quizzes as the game. When students won’t ask questions, pay attention, or even attempt the work given to them, that is practicing poor effort that will become permanent habits.

I am sure that I have plenty more that I could say about this topic, but I will save that for another time!– 

Grant Condon

Silver Creek Middle School

8th Grade Math