"Right Away, All the Way, and With a Happy Heart"

When I was student teaching in my education training (nearly 10 years ago now! 😱), I had the amazing opportunity to teach with a wonderful Master Teacher. He taught first grade, and I learned more from him than I ever thought possible. He instructed me about educating students in a classroom, and so much of that carries over into motherhood! He had a quote in his classroom that he used with his students all the time. Obey, "Right away, all the way, and with a happy heart!" The students responded so well to it, I was astonished at how well the children obeyed, along with the discipline and direction Mr. Jauregui gave them. In his classroom, the students responded to his instruction "right away" (immediately), "all the way" (working at the task until it was finished) and "with a happy heart" (without questioning or complaining).

When you think about it, "Right away, all the way, and with a happy heart," is a Biblical principle! I was in church on Sunday, and the pastor was teaching on Abram and Sarai, and how they packed up their bags immediately after God called them to a different path (Genesis 12). Abram and Sarai didn't question God's calling, they followed "right away, all the way, and with a happy heart!" They demonstrated their faith and thankfulness to Him, with obedience.  There are so many other stories in the Bible like this one. This is the kind of response the Lord wants from us! (John 14:15) He wants obedience and faith to be an immediate reaction on our part... And if you think about it, how much time and grief would we be saved from if we just obeyed?!

I imperfectly implement this now, with my own children. And by imperfectly, I mean, obedience is HARD! My children and I are not perfect. Just when it seems like we have this down, the complaining/whining kicks back in, or my instructions are ignored, or the job is only half done. This will certainly be something that we will be working on for many years to come. I decided to spend the week directly teaching this kind of obedience, along with the Mother Goose Time curriculum, specifically with our clean-up time.

I have been saying this quote to my children since Jonathan was about  2 years old, so they were both very familiar with it. But seeing that directly teaching (and re-teaching) is necessary in order to clearly communicate expectations, I decided it was time to focus on it again. We did this during our circle time in the morning.

All ready for circle time!

Our circle time board

During this time, I taught what each part of the quote meant for them. I even had them memorize the quote themselves and recorded it with my phone. They had so much fun recording it and then watching themselves say it again. They especially loved being silly while saying it.

Then it came time to practice! Throughout the lessons, we took time to clean-up our messes and made sure to implement/say "Right away, all the way and with a happy heart" as we were doing so.

Putting markers away

Mother Goose Time comes with some amazing resources and tools to help with the learning process, and when we finish, we need to put them away. Jonathan loves working with these tangrams and it offered an excellent time to practice!

This quote has been so helpful to me in my business, my motherhood and in my own spiritual walk! I will be forever thankful for my wonderful Master Teacher, for not only teaching me how to be a good teacher, but also how to be a good mother. And I am so grateful to MGT for giving me the opportunity and direction to teach my own children.

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