A miracle non the less.

This has been a very hard week for me. A dear friend and close coworker of mine laid to rest her three and half year old daughter. The doctors have yet to identify the ailment which caused her sudden demise. While attending the memorial services for this precious little angel I began to try to understand the meaning of it all. It was at a moment in the middle of the service that I realized that as painful as it was to loose her, as much as it hurt her family and friends, that her ailment and death brought us "all” at Schreiner to our knees. I can not recall a time in my three years here at Schreiner were we as a community came together for a common cause. We have had sporadic instances were we would join together for a cause but for the most part it was only pockets of support here and there. Mariel's life and death brought us all together to pray to our God.  We all prayed for a miracle recovery and as odd as it may sound that is what we were receiving all along. Mariel’s performed a miracle for us all. She reconnected us with God. I have seen people pray for her that at one point stated that they were atheist. Mariel although only three and half has completely changed the environment here at Schreiner.  Thank you for your life and your miracle Mariel.

26 in 3

Capacity building, not judgmentalism, is a hill-climbing secret. The formula is simple, but difficult to implement: start by taking the stigma out of the picture, and let pressure do its far more powerful work through the actions and interactions of the six secrets. The pressure that results from our secrets is more organically built into cultures. When peers interact purposefully, their expectations of one another create positive pressure to accomplish goals important to the group. (Fullan 2008, p.63)

I think this describes Cohort 4. Our goal is for UMHB to graduate 26 doctors in 3 years (well about 2.5 years now). That is positive pressure. I know I do not want to let you all down and I believe you all feel that same type of positive pressure. That is why we work so diligently and purposefully to complete our assignments.  I know this journey will be a bumpy as life may get in the way but we will weather is storm together and "all 26" of us will have the honor of calling each other Dr. (place your name here). Remember to claim it as yours in Gods name. See you all in a couple of weeks.

All the beautiful trees!!!!!!

I have been at Schreiner for three years now and I walk around campus all the time, but today was different. Today I have noticed all the trees on our campus. I had never really paid attention to them before, but I noticed them today because of all the shade they were offering me from the retna burning sunshine.  I began to notice all the different types of trees from oaks to pecan to crap-apple trees. I then began to wonder to my self. I said self, my self said Uh? (Mr. Brown fans get it) I started to wonder how often we do we not pay attention to the beauty around us until it has something to offer to us. For instance how often to we ignore those gifted and bright students until they score well on the TAKS test? Do we teach to the lowest common denominator? Why? Would it be better to expect those “slower learning” students to try harder and keep up? I know my thoughts are bias as I have never had to deal with the bureaucracy of the public school education system. At the higher education level it is a sink or swim mentality which now that I am reflecting in action has its down falls as well. What are your thoughts on this?