Step Four: Cultivate
The process doesn’t stop when the seeds start to grow. It takes time, work and resources to bring plants to maturity.
Education Applications:
The process of educating students doesn’t stop once a concept has been presented to the student. It takes time, work and resources to bring students to maturity. Teachers do this when they:
Faith Application:
There is an old adage about why people do not share the Gospel: “I shared it once and nothing happened, so I stopped.” That is as frivolous as the husband who answered his wife’s question about why he doesn’t tell her he loves her with, “I told you I loved you when we married fifty years ago, if it changes I’ll tell you.”
Once we start a Gospel conversation we must be willing to step up and continue to speak the Gospel – live the Gospel – do the Gospel.
This will take time, effort and resources.
The process doesn’t stop when the seeds start to grow. It takes time, work and resources to bring plants to maturity.
Education Applications:
The process of educating students doesn’t stop once a concept has been presented to the student. It takes time, work and resources to bring students to maturity. Teachers do this when they:
- Reteach, Review and Reinforce: It is through repetition and practice that students will internalize teachings.
- Provide positive feedback: catching a student doing it “correct” and offering a word of encouragement allows students to emphasize the positive and eliminate the negative. It was hard for me as a teacher to ignore and overlook the negative while reinforcing the positive. It seemed counter intuitive to me that I had to take the time to reward positive growth when scolding negative seemed to be easier.
- Remove obstacles to learning: I needed to weed my garden to prevent the unwanted plants stealing resources needed for healthy plants. I also needed to remove obstacles that toke away from my students’ time, attention and concentration. Sometimes it was as easy as turning off the buzzing overhead lights, opening a window to bring in fresh air, closing the classroom door to prevent outside noise, or any of dozens of other minor annoyances. Sometimes I had to remove obstacles of a more distracting nature: gum, phones, make-up, magazines and inappropriate behavior were some of the more major obstacles. Then there were the few times when help was needed to remove a more serious obstacle. I needed to call parents to help prevent chronic late homework, bullying, or inappropriate behavior and language.
Faith Application:
There is an old adage about why people do not share the Gospel: “I shared it once and nothing happened, so I stopped.” That is as frivolous as the husband who answered his wife’s question about why he doesn’t tell her he loves her with, “I told you I loved you when we married fifty years ago, if it changes I’ll tell you.”
Once we start a Gospel conversation we must be willing to step up and continue to speak the Gospel – live the Gospel – do the Gospel.
This will take time, effort and resources.