Coach Kip

Warning: Rant and Personal Views here. Some may be controversial and offending to some.

As some of you know who have been following my blog I am a public school teacher and a football coach. Me and my wife have been looking into many different avenues to be able to teach and give what we have. The current school system just does not let us do this. Why?

They are factories. I am sorry people but not everyone is an expert in schools. One of the problems with schools is that everyone thinks that they are experts. Why? Because everyone has been to school. But they have only seen one or two parts of what school is.

Everyone has seen school from a students stand point. Yes it is boring, yes some of the teachers can seem apathetic. Yes you probably didn’t like it. Why? It was not stimulating enough, it was not interactive enough, and for most of us it just was not challenging enough.

The teachers are not apathetic, they are board to. So why don’t they do anything about it? Because you have not seen the other part of education. Very few have. I know. I have been in schools now for 7 years, early in the morning. You know who is there early in the morning? Teachers and Principles. Thats it. Don’t try to say that you know how things are. If you have had a parent meeting early in the morning you still don’t know what it is like. You still don’t see teachers scrambling to use broken copiers, outdated books, limited resources, and limited time. You don’t see the struggles that many teachers go through.

If you are reading this and you are a teacher who has these resources then you are one of the lucky ones. You don’t have it made, but you are getting closer.

What about after school? Yes many teachers leave within the first 15-20 minutes that school is over. But what do they do at home. Most of the time they leave because school is a very negative place. Teachers like to bitch about the latest problems with Principles, Students, Parents, the School Board, our President, whatever. No one is immune. It is not harmful, it is just venting. But it is extremely negative.

So they take their work home so that they can do it in their own setting. Most teachers have homework. If you are one of the lucky ones (I am included in this) then you have a system set up in your classroom that lets you be done at 2:30 or whenever you school lets out. But it takes years of planning until you get to that point.

Back to the factories. To get to that point it has to be run like a factories. The worst possible system for a school to be run. It just does not work. It is not innovative, it is not creative, it is not real learning. Concepts are being replaced by techniques to get the answer right. True learning is being replaced by memorization. We have the technology and the ability but not the means. It is very frustrating.

Why? Because we are tested. Not just our students. Teachers can be hired and fired from tests. Students just have to take them to pass. Not teachers. No matter what anyone tells you teachers are judged based on how well their students do. It is unfair because these tests take all the learning out of schools and limit themselves to rote learning just to get students graduated so that the school gets enough money to pay the staff and turn on the lights. It is a sad sad time in public schools.

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My Grandmother who was 98 just passed away. It is very sad, but it is also a very happy time. She was ready, and had been ready. I am sure that it was very frustrating for her for the last few years. Her mind is as sharp as ever, and we as a society let them go to waste. She knew everything about everything right up to her final days. How do I know this? I visited her just three weeks ago. It is a long trip about 250 miles (about 402 km), but I am glad I saw her. We are close, probably even closer now.

I do not want to get to spiritual because I know my views are very different from most people, even though I see them as being more balanced, but I know that her spirit is still alive and well. It makes me cry to think that she is with my Grandfather now, who she missed dearly.

It all puts things into very sharp perspective. My Grandmother was a very great lady, living from 1910 until Friday. Incredible. So what does that really mean? What did she do with her life, how did she live it? What happened in history? Heck she was married during the great depression. Her husband was told to stay home during the war to take care of his family and manage factories that supplied the war. One son was in the Airborne Rangers, another in Vietnam. One Grandson is now in Iraq. There were tremendous changes in civil rights, the economy, technology, and even transportation.

But there she sat in her room needing assistance to do nearly everything for the last 5 years. A mind full of wisdom and history, a mind that really needed to be exposed to the world. There she sat waiting for her next visitor, watching the Detroit Tigers. She was very disappointed that Brandon Inge got moved to the outfield this year by the way.

So what can we learn from this? Things that seem big to us really are not. My grandmother lived through all that stuff without anything really effecting her. It is part of life. Things happen, situations arise, come, are dealt with and we move on. It does not really change what life is all about. It does not really change the things that are important. What is important is are you happy personally? Are the people around you happy? Are you contributing in a good and positive manor? Are you making a difference?

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Why do I like golf? To me golf is a meditation. It is a way for me to get away and be free from the day and the happenings around me. Why do we all need a place like this to go?

We all need a simple place to go to get balance back in our lives. In most of the World our lives are very stressful. Meditation is a great way to retain this center. It is a great way to get back to our basics to relax, to enjoy our lives, to slow down.

Life is fast. Many times in the last year I have been in school teaching all day, then coaching until the late evening, I get home and get on the computer and do some web design or some writing. For what? Is that what I really want out of my life? What am I working toward? I am working toward a simpler more free life. A life that lets me do the things I want to do.

Guess what. Sometimes we work so hard to get something that we think we want, or that we actually need that we sometimes overlook the fact that we already have that. Mediation, slowing down, taking time to reflect lets us see things that may be right in front of us.

One of the things that I would like to do is play more golf. It is a great mental and physical challenge. Probably the most mentally and physically challenging games there is. But I have been concentrating so much on working to get toward that goal I have hardly played in the last 8 months. Now that my sites are working and my life is changing and moving toward the goals that I wanted in the first place I have to slow down and play a little golf. I find that after I just go to the driving range I have a much easier time concentrating and getting things done.

Find what it is that works for you. Find your meditation. For some simply sitting in a quiet place with no outside distractions is their meditation. For others it is sitting down with a good book, and for still others it is some other hobby. Find what helps you relax and you will find that you may already have many of the things that you are working so hard to get.

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Success is reaching goals that you set for yourself. That is it.

Nobody can know success without setting goals. Success is a measurement. If you don’t know how to measure it you will never be successful.

Success is different for everyone. It is only important for you to know know what your success is. That means that you have to set goals for yourself and not compare yourself to others. Comparing yourself to others is a sure way to disappointment. They are simply not you. You need to know you, and worry about you.

The only way to be unsuccessful is to have no goals. Unfortunately many people go through life without direction, without goals. They whine and complain about how their life is unfulfilling, but they do not have a direction. Do you want success? Then you need a direction.

But is not reaching goals unsuccessful? No! If you do not reach a goal that is OK. You simply change the time frame. The only other way to be unsuccessful is to quit. Quitters are never successful.

There are a few things that we need to learn about setting goals. It is difficult to do without some practice but to set goals properly we have to set big goals that are still realistic. I will talk more about that later.

So can you be successful? Do you know hot to measure it? Do you have goals that you are working toward? What are you focusing on?

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Well it has been quite hectic around here. As most of my readers know we are getting together funds, sponsors, advertisers to purchase a boat so that we can live on it for the next 15 months to two years. It should be a great experience.

My favorite question is where are you going to live? Duh on a boat. We will not really have a harbor to call home. We plan on traveling much of the time, meet new people, and expand our knowledge. (Check us out at TrekkingAround.com).

In doing this it has really made me keep things in prospective. There really is no need to have all this extra junk. It made me realize that I was working for possessions, for junk. Why did I need all that stuff? I have a nice little townhouse that is now for sale. That was good for me. I would have liked to have been in a nicer part of town but I was living on a golf course. The problem was that I was spending all my time working and spending money on possessions that I did not need. Half of the time I would get a bill for something that I did not even know I had. I had no idea why I bought it and I had no idea where I put it. It was terrible. I was working to pay off credit card debt, house debt, student loans, car loans, and trying to keep up with all the bills. Bills are not hard but they tend to change from time to time. Sometimes they change the due date on them, and if you are not paying close attention then you miss that change. Not a very good thing.

So we had a fire sale. Everything must go and what does not go is given away. Yes my wife gave away a little too much but that is OK.

Without all these distractions I have been able to focus. To really focus. With out all these distractions I have become refamiliar with what I really want.

That may be a good practice for you to. Get away from the things that are distracting you. If you are not happy go somewhere so that your distractions are gone. Go to a quiet park, go to the beach, take a drive into the country and stop on the side of a little used road.

Then think. Take a pad of paper and think. Think of what it is that you really want. Think of what you can do without. How bad do you want it? What are you willing to do to make the change? Are you willing to change?

Einstein “Doing the same thing over and over expecting something different is the definition of insanity.”

What is it that I want? I will post more at another time but basically it boils down to this. I want enough money to be able to travel with my wife, play golf, play on a boat, and enjoy life before I have to retire and I am too old to really enjoy life.

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