Teaching as a Rube Goldberg machine….

Rube-GoldbergTeaching affects eternity. It really does.

Our lives affect eternity but not near as perfectly and precisely, not near as powerfully nor presciently as teaching.

I’ve been thinking lately about my own affect – how I stumbled along and began EFL Classroom about 15 years ago just posting up a few resources and thoughts on a free website I built – the BATCAVE. And since then, like a Rube Goldberg machine, one thing led to another, led to another. One thing had an effect that nobody could really predict but somehow through all those effects, one BIG EFFECT did happen. A thread ran through all the  pushes, pulls and dispersion of energies.

It’s amazing how in our classrooms, just like EFL Classroom – this same thing occurs. And you never know what you do or what you say – how it will affect eternity and keep that thread threading……

As students, we also have been affected by teachers. I remember a cold autumn evening, like tonight, many years ago. Just a few months into being 16. Hitchiking home to the farm after X-country practice. Hitch hiking home under a dim street light along a highway that led into black. Out of nowhere came a runner, my French teacher Lionel Desjardins. He stopped and asked me what was up. He could have just waved and kept running but he stopped. We talked or rather, he talked and I nodded.  I won’t reveal our conversation, it remains private but just that he cared, made a difference. He set things in motion, in a way that led to this, to that and to where I am……

We are so blessed as teachers, to weave such fabric. Almost godlike, we touch the future and keep alight something which we are still searching a name for….

I don’t know what it is but I do know we are a Rube Goldberg machine that gets us there as we butterfly along. Let’s keep touching eternity and keeping the world on its axis. My hats off to all those teachers that daily make this miraculous thing happen.

To end or rather abandon this post – here are 2 of my fav. Rube Goldberg videos.



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ddeubel

Teacher trainer, technology specialist, educational thinker...creator of EFL Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for thousands of EFL / ESL teachers and students around the world.

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