Taking Pride in Shoveling

DAY 14  #SOL17  Year 1

 

Just got in from shoveling after about two hours and we don’t even have a long sidewalk or large driveway.  This snow required many breaks due to the layer of sleet and the snow underneath that was beginning to melt.  Maybe 8 inches or more, but it was heavy or maybe I am just aging and reaching the point where shoveling snow is too much for me.

Shoveling was always an enjoyable act for me.  It was a science or art form, there was a certain way to do so.   My old neighbor, Joe, who took very good care of his property and was a MacGyver of sorts, showed me how to shovel as well as my mother.  They were both raised during the depression when pride was taken in whatever task you were doing.  No matter if it was hanging laundry or mowing the lawn there was always a certain way of doing things.

This makes me wonder if that pride still exists.  Today, it seems there is a desire to just get things over with.  I hear teachers encouraging students to do their best, but is the message heeded as much as it once was?  Many students will complete a task with very little pride or effort but is that due to the task itself or the environment in which they are being raised?

Engagement is critical, but so is effort.  Do you always need to be engaged or entertained in order to have effort?  Is it a bad thing to take your time on menial tasks?  I have many questions to ponder.

Phil Bildner’s book, Marvelous Cornelius, lives in my classroom.  It is one of the picture books in our March Reading Madness competition.  They are many qualities about this book that I love, but my favorite part is the introductory quote which states:

 

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a

Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He

should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,

‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”  Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Where and how did that pride disappear?  Today, it seems that people just want to get the work done or something is too beneath them to do.  Why?