The Kents: Primary Teachers

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Primary Teachers

Last week we were sustained and set apart as primary teachers in our ward. We were assigned to the 11 and 12 year olds. Today we had the opportunity of teaching the lovely children. There were 4 rambunctious, ADD boys and one precious girl in our class. Right after sacrament meeting we had a hard time finding the classroom we were supposed to teach in. We asked a member of the bishopric who then asked the primary president who then led us down a hall to the most distant classroom from the rest of the church building... We found out why they placed us in such a remote location about 15 minutes into our experience with the 4 sugar-high, energetic, immature boys...

Preston has always said that he isn't good with children. I told him after today that he was no longer allowed to say that because for most of the class time I was looking at him with amazement and admiration. The way he kept those boys under control was not only effective, it was highly amusing.. I wouldn't have known what to do with them if he wouldn't have been there. The kids loved him and we all got a kick out of the things he said.

We both enjoyed being with the kids, it definitely was more exciting than grown-up Sunday school. It's amazing to me how much more mature girls are than boys at that age. We'll see how it goes next time we attempt to "teach" the kids...

In the meantime, I just love Preston.

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Quotes that Inspire

“If you work hard you will be happy, if you don’t, you’ll go to hell.” -- Brigham Young.

"The greatest joy we can have in this life is bringing the best out of others." --Anonymous

“Freedom is not defined by safety. Freedom is defined by the ability of citizens to live without government interference. Government cannot create a world without risks, nor would we really wish to live in such a fictional place. Only a totalitarian society would even claim absolute safety as a worthy ideal, because it would require total state control over its citizens’ lives...” -- Ron Paul

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people." --Admiral Hyman G. Rickover

"I wish people who have trouble communicating would just shut up." --Tom Lehrer

"A resistance to anything that limits one’s conduct has almost taken over society. Our whole social order could self-destruct over the obsession with freedom disconnected from responsibility, where choice is imagined to be somehow independent of consequences." -- Boyd K Packer

"There will be occasions in each of our lives when we will be called upon to explain or to defend our beliefs. When the time for performance arrives, the time for preparation is past." --Thomas S. Monson

"Why do we assume that simple is good? Because with physical products, we have to feel we can dominate them. As you bring order to complexity, you find a way to make the product defer to you. Simplicity isn't just a visual style. It's not just minimalism or the absence of clutter. It involves digging through the depth of the complexity. To be truly simple, you have to go really deep. For example, to have no screws on something, you can end up having a product that is so convoluted and so complex. The better way is to go deeper with the simplicity, to understand everything about it and how it's manufactured. You have to deeply understand the essence of a product in order to be able to get rid of the parts that are not essential." -- Jonathan Ive, from the book, Steve Jobs, by Walter Isaacson

"I get up every morning determined to both change the world and have one hell of a good time. Sometimes this makes planning my day difficult." --E. B. White

"Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves." --Albert Einstein

“The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.” --Vince Lombardi

"Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured." --Gordon B. Hinckley

"Attitudes are contagious. Is yours worth catching?"
--Anonymous

"The nearer man approaches perfection, the clearer are his views, and the greater his enjoyments, till he has overcome the evils of his life and lost every desire for sin; and like the ancients, arrives at that point of faith where he is wrapped in the power and glory of his Maker and is caught up to dwell with Him. But we consider that this is a station to which no man ever arrived in a moment.” --Joseph Smith

"Broaden your vision; Lengthen your stride." --Spencer W. Kimball

"It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven played music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well." --Martin Luther King Jr.

“Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” --Confucious

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." --Mark Twain

"There's a simple rule for becoming a writer, or an artist, or a photographer: do it. If you want to become a photographer, take pictures. If you want to become a writer, write. If you want to become and artist, draw. There is no substitute. There is no royal road offered by taking courses or reading how-to books. Unless you sit down and do it, such things are utterly useless.

Now, becoming a better writer, artist, dancer or what-not will perhaps benefit from instruction, but instruction is not a substitute for action. Taking a course in writing is a bit like buying a diet book and not doing anything else. The diet book will not magically make you slender and desirable. You've got to eat less and exercise more, and the book is not going to do it for you.

I think of such things as the "illusion of action." You think you're doing something when you're watching the TV news. You think something has happened because you bought a diet book. You think you've done something because you took a course in writing, but unless you have brought something to it, nothing at all has happened." --David Lance Goines

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him." --Booker T Washington

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars.” --Les Brown

"...So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. There are other forces at work in this world Frodo, besides the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought." --Gandalf from“Lord of the Rings”