What I Can and Can't Do

Good morning, God, and thanks for this new day in my life.  It's getting cold here in Idaho these days--it seems like yesterday that we were turning on the air conditioner to cool off the house a bit.  Now we can see snow on the not-so-distant mountains, and we've even had a few days of rain to enjoy.  On this new day, I hope to do something helpful and useful to and for others, so I most definitely would appreciate your help in seeing what would be good to do, and what would be counterproductive or even destructive.  Making decisions isn't always easy, and any help I can get to make the right ones would make me very grateful.

It's Thursday, so most of the work week has gone by.  We have just two more days of classes until we have another weekend, and I'm looking forward to that!  Last weekend was spent on the go and correcting papers and such, so this weekend promises to be restful.

In this day ahead, though, I do want to ask for your guidance in a very specific area.  As a teacher I find that there are many, many grey areas in which it seems like I should be able to do something, while at the same time it seems that it really isn't my place even to try.  Sometimes it seems that I should be able to reach a certain student, while at other times it seems that someone else is a much better candidate for doing so, or that the student just isn't ready to be reached.

Sometimes it seems that I should be able to teach 100% of my students a certain concept or process, and at other times it seems that I should be happy with 70 or 80%.

I know that I can't do everything; nor am I meant to be able to do so.  But in some areas, it should be possible to accomplish a lot.  Could you help me to discern between those two dynamics?  When should I push harder because something is attainable but we're just not there yet, and when should I back off a bit because even if we push terribly hard, the goal is beyond us at the moment?

After all, I wouldn't expect to be able to swim the English Channel if I've been swimming for just three or four days.  Sometimes in school we think that we should be able to do certain things just because we've done some other things, but that's not always the case.

So the bottom line is that I'd like to ask your help in making decisions about just what I'm going to do with my students, and just what I'm going to expect from them when they do what they do.  Any advice that you can give would be greatly appreciated, too.