Superintendent’s Chat

Richard McClements, Shonto Preparatory School

 

Our walk through this life is but a moment in time.  What seemed to be a lifetime of pending experiences quickly passes.  I will never forget when my first daughter, Shelley, was born.  Those next two years were among the happiest of my life.  Before I knew it, she was graduating from high school, then college, then got married, then became a mother.  I am now middle aged.  I think back of my memories in utter amazement.  Was it really just a blur?

 

If there is any single place that ought to convince anyone of our mortality and the history of our lives, it should be a graveyard.  Every person who rests there has a story, had both the good and the bad that life had to offer.  Some were wonderful people.  Some were not.  Look at any picture from the 1880’s.  Not a single person is with us today.  They are resting at peace somewhere.

 

What is the point?  It is that life is a celebration.  We were developed by our creator to experience life to the fullest. We were designed to create and leave something positive behind.  We are not put here to steal, sell narcotics, become alcoholics, become pedofiles, arsonists, have one child after another outside of marriage, rip off the system whether it be the Navajo Nation, State of Arizona, or the United States Government, spend our lives in jail, or go through one unhappy relationship after another.

 

Every student in every school district is going through a molding process.  Their work ethic, their people skills, their  Jump forward 20 years into each student’s life, and I think you will see a remarkable correlation between what they did in public school and what they are once they go out into society.   Of course there are exceptions, and how wonderful that is.  But the percentages are high that whatever Johnnie Jones was in school, he will be as an adult.