Make It Happen!

I saw an excerpt from this book on a couple of blogs and knew I had to read it. I love Ron Clark. I read his book The Essential 55 when I was in college and starting to teach. He inspired me. He was what I wanted to be. But as I've gotten bogged down in teaching, I've drifted away from his ideas and rules. I had already decided that this year would be different and reading this book was going to help. I had planned on participating in the book study with Faithful in First and was bummed when it didn't work out. So I decided to write some posts of my own about the book.
The first principle that has really struck a cord with me is number 9. "Make it happen. Don't give excuses; find solutions!"

I  love the idea of not making excuses for things but just making things happen. It is so easy to complain about things in our education system The negatives are right there. We don't have time to teach all we need to teach. We can't have fun in kindergarten anymore. Kids won't do their homework because their parents don't make them. These are things I've been complaining about. I want my kids to leave kindergarten and first grade (I loop) knowing how to read, loving school and learning,  being able to think and reason. I've set this goal for myself before school started. I decided this year would be different. I was going to have fun and enjoy the kids. Then school started and I remembered what little time we have to accomplish so much. I have found myself complaining and thinking I just can't do it. As I was reading this book on Saturday and got to this principle, I sent myself an email with the words Make it happen. I knew I needed to have these words somewhere so I could see them. I made myself a sign that hangs over my desk that says "Make It Happen."

I hope to add some pictures of what I want to make happen underneath the sign. If you watch the show Jerseylicious on Style, you'll know what I'm talking about. One of the characters, Olivia, makes a vision board of her goals and what she wants out of life. I got the idea this summer that I would do something along these lines. But I needed Ron Clark to remind of it. So this year instead of excuses, I plan to make it happen. What about you?
I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago before the book study started about The End of Molasses Classes. I reread it just now to see if I had other things I wanted to say about the part one. But with things that are going on with me at school, I feel like this is still the most thought provoking principle for me at this time. I think this is the kind of book you could read parts of over and over and depending on what is going on it would affect you differently. I was reading someone else's post as part of the linky party. I don't remember who it was  but I related to them saying that it was hard to read in some parts because it hit so close to home.