The Greatest Bedtime Story of All

Luke Ch. 3; Matthew Ch. 1 and 2.

Now, this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. When his mother Mary was engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found with child through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, her husband, an upright man unwilling to expose her to the law, decided to divorce her quietly. Such was his intention, when suddenly the angel of the lord appeared in a dream and said to him: “Joseph, son of David, have no fear about taking Mary as your wife. It is by the Holy Spirit that she has conceived this child. She is to have a son, and you are to name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.”

All this happened to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin shall be with child and give birth to a son, and they shall call him Emmanuel,” a name which means “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke, he did as the angel of the Lord had directed him and received her into his home as his wife.

In those days, Caesar Augustus published a decree ordering a census of the whole world. This first census took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone went to register each to his own town. And so, Joseph went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to David’s town of Bethlehem – because he was of the house and lineage of David – to register with Mary, his espoused wife, who was with child.

While they were there, the days of her confinement were completed. She gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the place where travelers lodged.

There were shepherds in that region, living in the fields and keeping night watch by turns over their flocks. The angel of the Lord appeared to them as the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were very much afraid. The angel said to them: “You have nothing to fear! I come to proclaim good news to you – tidings of great joy to be shared by the whole people. This day, in David’s city, a savior has been born to you, the Messiah and Lord. Let this be a sign to you: in a manger you will find an infant wrapped in swaddling clothes.”

Suddenly, there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying, “Glory to God in high heaven, peace on earth to those on whom his favor rests.”

When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to one another: “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this event which the Lord has made known to us.” They went in haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the bay lying in the manger; once they saw, they understood what had been told them concerning this child. All who heard of it were astonished at the report given them by the shepherds.

After Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem of Judea, during the reign of King Herod, astrologers from the east arrived one day in Jerusalem inquiring, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We observed his star at its rising and have come to pay him homage.” At this news, King Herod became greatly disturbed, and with him all Jerusalem. Summoning all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. “In Bethlehem of Judea,” they informed him. “And you, Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means least among the princes of Judah, since from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel.”

Herod called the astrologers aside and found out from them the exact time of the star’s appearance. Then he sent them to Bethlehem, after having instructed them: “Go and get detailed information about the child. When you have found him, report it to me so that I may go and offer him homage too.”

After their audience with the king, they set out. The star which they had observed at its rising went ahead of them, until it came to a standstill over the place where the child was. They were overjoyed at seeing the star, and on entering the house, found the child with Mary, his mother. They prostrated themselves and did him homage. Then they opened their coffers and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

They received a message in a dream not to return to Herod, so they went back to their own country by another route.

Mary treasured all these things and reflected on them in her heart. The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, in accord with what had been told them.

From the Life Tools Tutoring family to yours, we wish you a blessed, joyful and peaceful Christmas season.

Career Exploration

There are few conversations more uncomfortable to witness than a well-meaning uncle or family friend asking a junior or senior in high school what they intend to do when they graduate. The vast majority of the answers are vague and impressive sounding: “My plan is to head off to Madison, but I’m not sure what I will be studying yet,” or, “For sure something in the medical field because I took a crime scene forensics class that I really liked.” Most of these answers involved very little research or introspection and were crafted for the benefit of the asker.

To be sure, some 17-year-olds know exactly what career they would like to pursue, and some have known from a young age. A percentage of these students have a very straight path from high school, through college or trade school, and into a successful livelihood. Even for these ‘lucky’ students, however, many of them find that the career field they knew they wanted was not everything they had hoped it would be, and they eventually decide to take a different path.

How strange that we, as a society, do very little to expose our young people to the ‘options’ that exist in the working world and yet stare at them expectantly when we ask them, “What’s your plan?”

This process can be a time of anxiety and confusion for many students, especially if we advise them to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans in order to figure out where they fit. In addition, a major reason that students are unmotivated in the classroom is that they have not identified what careers they might be interested in, and, as a result, are unable to connect the dots between high school academics and pursuing their career goals.

So how can we, as local communities, assist our high school students (and even our middle school students), to experience what career fields and specific positions the world has to offer? As a starting point, we need to avoid the temptation to put this urgent obligation on the shoulders of the schools. Most teachers and administrators would be very willing to be a strong collaborating partner in this effort, but as I wrote in a previous blog, the schools are already overwhelmed with mission creep, which is destroying proficiency scores. This effort should be led by the business community and parents and will ultimately provide many benefits for local community in the long run.

What might this Career Exploration program look like specifically? The first step in this process is to prioritize Career Exploration on-par with reading, math, physical fitness, and financial literacy. Career Exploration needs to be a significant part of a student’s ‘education’, even if it is not driven directly by the teachers. But what classes or activities would be sacrificed to make room for this addition? If we, as parents, have learned anything through the virtual leaning experience brought on by Covid, we are clear that there is ‘underutilized’ and in some cases ‘wasted’ time in our students’ school day.

Perhaps we can learn from some local communities who already have programs in place to give students first-hand exposure to work options. Many high schools provide hybrid school / work opportunities that allow students to learn in school in the morning and then investigate a trade by working part-time in the afternoons. The Kimberly School District has an innovative program that introduces students as young as elementary school to guest speakers from ‘the real world’, as well as comprehensive software programs that assist students in exploring their interests and abilities in the context of specific career fields.

Additionally, could we have our Sophomores and Juniors commit an afternoon a week to Career Exploration field trips that provide generic exposure to job opportunities or specific exposure to a targeted industry? What if every student was required to tour a local manufacturing facility to learn about operations, accounting, quality control, purchasing, logistics, management, and office administration? What if we provide our students with the chance to visit a local hospital or nursing home to visit with a nurse, a doctor, a lab technician, or an insurance administrator? What if we created a database of professional people who were willing to meet one-on-one for 30 minutes with a student who has narrowed his / her career search and is interested in asking specific questions to learn more? Even if this Career Exploration process only assists our young people to check the ‘No’ boxes (I’m not interested in that), how much further ahead would they be when the time came to choose a path forward.

I challenge community leaders, business leaders, parents, and school administrators to get the ball rolling by organizing a brain-storming session. As there have been some successes around this concept locally and nationally, let’s review best-practices and implement what works. The future of our country, the future of our businesses, and the future of our students are depending on us.

Reading, ‘Riting, & ‘Rithmetic

While watching the local or national news over the past ten plus years, one cannot help but notice that school boards and administrators have been front and center dealing with a whole host of controversial issues.  Those issues include:

  • “How much sex / lifestyle choices / gender issues should be included in health class?”
  • “Is the school district offering sufficient mental health support for children as the suicide rates continue to rise?”
  • “Should BLM posters be hung in classrooms or is that supporting a political ideology?”
  • “Will the local elementary school be providing the expanded federally-funded breakfast / lunch / dinner program?”
  • “Should ‘school’ include full-day childcare for my three-year-old?”
  • “Does forcing my child to urinate in a cup for mandatory drug tests infringe on her first amendment rights?”
  • “Should we spend $60 million on the new high school building with a pool and an indoor workout facility, or just $55 million with no pool?”

As the education professionals will tell you, the list goes on and on and on. 

All of these issues have one thing in common: they have nothing to do with the original mission of the public school system which is to assist parents in teaching our children reading, writing, arithmetic, and the ability to reason.

To say that the public school system in the United States has been forced into mission creep is the understatement of the past 150 years.  The reason mission creep should be avoided at all costs is that as each new area of focus is added, organizations take their eyes off their primary purpose.  The data is frighteningly clear that math and reading proficiency in the United States has been steadily declining and our young people will surely suffer as a result.  Administrators, teachers, and parents can all agree that school system personnel are pulled in far too many directions and as a result are unable to do any of it well.

So who is responsible for this mission creep and how do we reclaim the lofty and unique calling of the public school system?  As with most national problems, there is a complex matrix of causes and players, and many of those involved had the best of intentions in mind.  Over the past 30 years, as various problems affecting our students have been identified, elected officials have defaulted to the school systems to fix all of these ills for the simple fact that the schools already had many of the kids in their buildings.  But it does take two to tango, and the schools chose to dance.  Because billions of federal, state, and local dollars chase all of these issues, school administrators, school boards, and teachers unions viewed these dollars as an easy way to pad budgets and increase salaries.  In addition, some teachers who possibly should have chosen social work or community activism as their career choice prefer these causes to ‘just teaching’.  Lastly, and probably most importantly, many parents are far too willing to place all of the responsibility of raising their children onto the schools and the professionals who work there.

We as parents have the primary responsibility to rectify this steadily worsening situation; firstly, we must take back and own our duty as parents as the primary educators and caretakers of our children. 

The village can certainly provide a helping hand, but at the end of the day, the buck stops with the parent(s).  We need to do better. 

We need to re-learn algebra if necessary; we need to feed our kids a healthy breakfast before they leave in the morning and have them pack a healthy lunch to take with them; we need to shut off our electronic devices and talk with our children about their friends, their fears, their challenges and their dreams; we need to teach our children respect for and tolerance for all people and all opinions whether or not that view is popular or supported by the latest YouTube star or Hollywood actor; we need to choose schools based on the strength of their academic offerings and not on the number of state basketball championships. 

Politicians and communities need to encourage (and fund) innovative solutions to the challenges young people are experiencing; this will allow new organizations (governmental, non-profit, and for-profit) with separate teams and targeted missions to be charged with those responsibilities.  School administrators and teacher unions and school boards must also advocate for their teachers and refocus on their primary mission – education.  They must have the courage to say ‘no’ to mission creep, even if that means sacrificing the dollars that come with the ask.

Certainly, collaboration and mutual support are critical to achieve success for our young people, but the days of placing all the world’s problems on the front mat of our local schools need to be behind us.  This system is failing our kids.

Will You Let Me Answer Prayers in You

Every high school student that is aspiring to one day attend college understands the importance of community service on his / her resume.  Organizations like Key Club and National Honor Society have community service at the core of their missions and provide a variety of events and activities for students to positively impact their school and/or their local community.  Having been members of both of these organizations, our older children have been able to participate in ringing bells for the Salvation Army, volunteering for blood drives, teaching younger students local history at the Grignon Mansion and collecting food to feed families that are facing financial challenges.  Through these experiences, our children have learned to look beyond themselves and their daily wants and needs and to focus on the needs of others.

Many other religious and service organizations including local church groups, service organizations like Rotary and Lions, and not-for-profits also provide much-needed dollars and resources to struggling populations throughout the country and the world.  In addition, the United States is by far the most generous nation in the world, sending billions of dollars to countries and families that have been stricken with drought, natural disasters, war, or disease.  Let us stay focused to ensure that these wonderful philanthropic efforts continue and expand over time.

Although much good is being accomplished locally, nationally, and internationally, there is an aspect of ‘serving thy neighbor’ that is being swallowed up by the institutionalization of community service.  Specifically, what has been lost in this new idea of group service is the act of being present, one-to-one, to a person in need. 

Many of us can remember a neighbor lady bringing over some warm meat loaf or chicken noodle soup when a loved one had passed.  Or perhaps a team of family and friends worked together to make meals for a family with young children whose mother went through a difficult delivery and was home with a new baby.  Sometimes it was just a telephone call, or an old friend stopping for coffee to ‘see how we were doing’ during a difficult time in our lives. 

None of these acts of being present to another were news worthy.  Huge amounts of money were not raised through a crowd-funding site; no families were given a new house to live in; the Mayor did not give out any humanitarian awards for these simple deeds; and the Earth was not saved from utter destruction.  However, just the same, these acts of loving thy neighbor were, and are, extraordinary.  They are so easy to do, but so difficult, somehow, in our mail-a-check-for-poverty society. 

A friend of mine once said, “I don’t go to funerals because I don’t like them, and I’d rather celebrate a person while they are alive.  Another friend responded, “Funerals are not about you.”  Being present to others does require us to think outside of ourselves; however, the encouraging part of these tremendously valuable experiences is that you do not have to worry about what to say or what to wear or what to bring.  Generally, if you just show up, the heavy lifting has already been done.  Thinking back to the funeral or to that difficult time in our lives, do we even remember what that person said to us when they came to us, or what they were wearing, or what food they brought?  Probably not, but we do remember who was there to sit with us, to listen, to be present to us.

Many of us are praying to God for some sort of miracle in our own lives or in the lives of people we love.  Do you suppose that you might be God’s answer to some of these prayers? 

We may not be able to cure someone of cancer or bring a loved one back to life, but we can do even more wonderous things than these for the hearts of those we touch.  If all of us, when we wake up in the morning, would say ‘Yes!’ to God’s question of, “Will you let me answer prayers in you?”, what a different world we would be living in.  Maybe cut out the words below from the Servant Song and tape them to your bathroom mirror.  Your kids will learn through your example the true meaning of community service.

The Servant Song

We are pilgrims on the journey
We are travelers on the road
We are here to help each other
Walk the mile and bear the load

I will hold the Christ light for you
In the nighttime of your fear
I will hold my hand out to you
Speak the peace you long to hear

I will weep when you are weeping
When you laugh, I’ll laugh with you
I will share your joy and sorrow
Till we’ve seen this journey through

Will you let me be your servant
Let me be as Christ to you
Pray that I might have the grace
To let you be my servant too

Individualized Tutoring For Your Individual Student

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When parents are searching for a tutor for their student, scrolling through random profiles of anonymous tutors on a national marketing website can be a very frustrating and uncomfortable process. At Life Tools Tutoring, we take the guess-work out of it. By taking the time to learn about the specific needs of your student, we can then match those needs with the gifts and talents of the appropriate tutor from our experienced team of tutors.

As one satisfied parent shared:
“[Life Tools Tutoring] knows the strengths of their staff and work hard to place a student with the best fit for the student’s learning style.”

Beyond providing subject-matter expertise, our tutors will also integrate specific life skills training, including organization, study skills, focus, accountability and independence, into the tutoring sessions. We will match your student with the perfect tutor, and we will walk with you throughout the tutoring process.

Our goals are your goals…Strong Kids.  Proud Parents.