"I love it when a plan comes together!"

This was the famous line of Hannibal from the A-Team (as opposed to Hannibal the cannibal Lector). However, sometimes the plan just doesn't come together. And that, my friends is when you must make the most of the situation. As a member of Team Mountain Dew, I admitted that my time between training sessions was limited with band camp and rehearsals occupying almost every moment. Therefore, I decided to limit my "game-improvement" involvement to the soundtrack development for "The Ultimate Lunch Tray". All seemed to be on track until at the last moment, I found that I could not open the .fla files that my other team members had posted on the wiki. Duh-duh-DUH!

So to make a long story short, I have soundtrack files and my team mates have published some great changes to the game - check them out on the wiki! - But, the plan didn't come together.

Now, every situation presents a learning experience that we as teachers can process and then use to help our students as they experience similar situations. So what have I learned from this situation?

Well, first of all, I must admit that procrastination played a part on my behalf (see the next post down). I have all sorts of reasons for not checking out these files earlier, but as the saying goes "In life you can have reasons or results. Reasons don't count." If I would have tried opening the .fla files a few days ago when they were posted, I would have discovered the problem earlier and had a better chance of solving the problem.

I think that my second pitfall was the fact that I missed my team conference session last week. (For anyone who is counting reasons, my wife got called into work an emergency case at the hospital at the last minute and I was alone watching my 4 year old son and 5 year old daughter). Good reason, but I still missed the session and the opportunity to possible catch my problem early enough to solve it.

So what can I take from this as I work with students this coming school year? I think I can sum it up in the following way: Stuff happens, and the "plan" doesn't always come together. However, by taking an account of your progress on a regular basis, and building in time for the unexpected, success can still be achieved.

Come to think of it, this is a great moment for teaching about the importance of blogging. By keeping a regular blog, we (teachers as well as students) can reflect on where we stand within a given process. Through this reflection, we can see how far we've come, how much work still remains, and maybe, just maybe, we can catch life's little pitfalls before they get out of control. This way, instead of writing a ridiculously guilt filled blog post about their failure to meet their goals, our students can be sitting back with a smile on their faces saying "I love it when a plan comes together!"