Prayer and B.F. Skinner

I learned so many different names and theories in Educational Psychology that it is difficult to keep them all straight. But I did remember one, B.F. Skinner. I think it was due to his quote that has always stayed in my mind: Give me a child and I'll shape him into anything. I was thinking of these things the past week because I have realized I succumb to many of Skinner's Behaviorist thoughts without knowing it. I wrongly assume that I am in control of my student's behaviors. I see a student misbehaving and rack my brain thinking of what action I can take so that the student has no choice but to start following my directions and acting in an appropriate behavior. I go on somewhat of a power trip thinking that I can somehow control my student's behaviors through the different reinforcements I give them. But sometimes, like last week, there is a student that in spite of my best efforts, still chooses to disobey. I had tried many things and they had all failed. So without giving it much thought, I mentioned this student as a prayer request to Becki. We prayed for the student that morning and I went on with my day. And unbelievably, it was one of the best days that this student has had this year. I don't expect this student to be a model student for the remainder of the year, but I was reminded that it is not my innovative disciplining strategies that mold students. Rather, it is God who works in the lives of these students and I have been given the opportunity to be one of the tools that God uses to help educate these children.

Decisions! Decisions!

Well, I know it has been a very long time since we have written and you are all probably very mad at us for not doing so, but today calls for a long awaited blog entry and decision. So here it goes!

If you remember, we asked a long time ago for you to pray for us as we made our decision for whether we should stay in the DR another year or go back to the United States. And we have been praying and pondering over this decision very hard over the past year. It is probably one of the biggest decisions we have ever had to make and we have definitely not taken it lightly.

Well, today was the day that we had to inform our school of our intentions for the next year and until Sunday we still had absolutely no clue what to do. But on Sunday we sat down and made our decision. So after all this prayer and discussion we write this blog to tell you about our decision for next year. With great excitement for what is to come and sadness for what we will be missing we write to you to tell you that.......

We are coming back home to our dear dear Indiana in the wonderful United States of America.

So, we thank you for all of your prayers and thoughts over the past year while we made our decision. It was a hard one.