Everybody needs to learn a new acronym now and again, and the acronym for today is RAFT. It floats (haha) around in the International Christian School world as a tool for helping students say goodbye well in the midst of an abundance of transition.
RAFT stands for:
R - Reconciliation (forgive each other)
A - Affirmation (affirm each other)
F - Farewell (say your goodbyes - to people, places, and things)
T - Think Ahead (duh)
When I came to ICSB in the fall of 2006, I began to look for ways to serve the Lord and be involved in the lives of the students outside of the school day. God gave me a wonderful opportunity with the 9th grade girls. At the time, every freshman girl was in my math class, and almost as nervous about starting high school as I was about teaching overseas. We began meeting weekly to study the Bible, pray together, and encourage each other.
I can't believe it, but now they are seniors. I am so proud of them and so thankful to have had the chance to watch as God has used them here and around the world. I'm already mentally preparing myself for what it will be like to say good-bye to them in June. I'm collecting as many sticks of memories as I can so that my raft is buoyant when the time comes. We had dinner together a couple nights before school began and they wrote notes to the new 9th grade girls, welcoming them to high school. And here are some of the new freshmen working busily in my Geometry class this past week. Don't they look engaged! I promise this was not a staged photograph, but it may never happen quite like this again!
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Maybe you should have a geometry party...that might keep them engaged all semester long! Actually, I think I always had my head down during my geometry class...it just didn't seem to make all that much sense to me...or to my teacher. She kept saying, "I don't know how they get this answer, but..." Lovely...I know.
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