I Do Care

One of my favorite teachers when I was growing up was Mr. Gary Rotan.  He was my sixth grade teacher.  In those days, sixth grade was still considered elementary and I spent my sixth grade year at Southeast Elementary.  Mr. Rotan was the first male teacher I ever had.  I am sure we gave him all the challenges he ever wanted.  Mr. Rotan was fresh out of college when he took the job at Southeast.  So naturally, we kids thought he was pretty cool.

And as sixth graders do, we developed some bad habits.  It became a sort of ritual to say "I don't care" whenever someone in the class was reprimanded by Mr. Rotan.  I'm not sure how this got started.  But I do know that Mr. Rotan didn't appreciate the sentiment.  He set out to fix this problem.

I'm sure he tried all kinds of talking to us but we "didn't care."  So Mr. Rotan established a new rule for his classroom.  Anyone who says "I don't care" would have to write the sentence "I do care" 100 times.  And when this punishment didn't seem to stop the apathetic phrase he carried the punishment a step further.  Each time this was said the number of sentence would be increased by 100.  So the second person would have to write it 200, the third person would have to write it 300, and so on.

This seemd to work better but we were up to the point where the next time it was said, the person would have to write "I do care" 500 times.

Now as you might guess, there is a reason I remember this scenario.  It was at this point that I was instructed by Mr. Rotan that I had not scored a very good grade on a math paper.  To my defense, it was stated in front of the whole class!  But my response was, "I don't care."  Immediately, the whole class chanted "Uhhmmm!"  Mr. Rotan then reminded me that I would now have to write "I do care" 500 times and that it would be due to him the next morning... to which I responded, "I don't care."

Now you may think that Mr. Rotan would let that one go. But nooooo.  He told me that I now have another 600 sentences to write.  I think he even smirked a little.  But I learned my lesson.  I spent that evening writing  "I do care" one thousand one hundred times.  And I am proud to say that I did not have to write those sentences again.

Later, I was fortunate to get to work with Mr. Rotan..  We were on several boards together while I was superintendent of Rotan and he the superintendent of Hermleigh.  And he really was one of my favorite teachers of all time.

The Morning Ritual

Now this is waking up to God's nature! View video in YouTube videos. http://youtu.be/ADgRSBVsVFw