SCCTC Director's Blog

Remember when we were young and we'd set paper on fire by using a magnifying glass? On a sunny day, the most powerful magnifying glass ever made will not light paper if you keep moving the glass. But if you focus and hold it, the paper will light up. That is the power of concentration.

A man was traveling and stopped at an intersection. He asked an elderly man, "Where does this road take me?" The elderly person asked, "Where do you want to go?" The man replied, "I'm not sure." The elderly person said, "Then take any road. What difference does it make?"

How true. When we don't know where we are going, any road will take us there.

Suppose you have eleven football players, enthusiastically ready to play the game, all charged up, and then someone took the goal lines and goal posts away. What would happen to the game? There is nothing left to play for. How do you know when you’ve scored? How do you know you have arrived? The goal is gone!

You could be enthusiastic about what you are doing but enthusiasm without direction is like a wildfire (it goes where the winds blows it) and leads to frustration. Goals give a sense of direction. Would you sit in a train or a plane without knowing where it was going? The obvious answer is no. Then why do people go through life without having any goals? Do you have goals for your students AND do they know them?

My goal for our students is to get them ready for a career and college after they leave us. I tell them every chance I get.

SPOKEN WORDS CAN'T BE RETRIEVED

A farmer insulted his neighbor. Realizing his mistake, he went to the preacher to ask for forgiveness. The preacher told him to take a bag of feathers and drop them in the center of town. The farmer did as he was told and went back to the preacher. The preacher asked him to go and collect the feathers and put them back in the bag. The farmer tried but couldn't as the feathers had all blown away. When he returned with the empty bag, the preacher said, "The same thing is true about your words. You dropped them rather easily but you cannot retrieve them, so be very careful in choosing your words."

On another note, credibility is a tremendous professional asset. Look around you. When someone has great credibility, others believe in and relate to them easily. People in general seem to be more pleasant and secure with them. Credibility is in our words and deeds. And our words and deeds are either “good as gold” or they are not. People respond according to whether we have established credibility with them.

I think that we all can become better at being credible. I know I want to be someone students and colleagues can count on. And don’t forget, once lost, credibility is almost impossible to regain.