bell ringer

When I was in school, I hated warm-ups.  Something about walking into a room and getting right to work just doesn't suit me; I need time to chat with friends and settle into my seat.  As an educator, I've learned that the teachers who have routine warm-ups are probably the ones who hated them as students.  In fact, the very reason that most teachers assign warm-ups is to give themselves some time to prepare for class before jumping right into the lesson.  We have to keep the kids busy while we scribble notes about the last class on various stray post-its (that we will most likely lose), locate buried worksheets (and wipe crumbs off of them), and take attendance (which we will have to correct when an absent student strolls into the room twenty minutes late...holding the Starbucks drink that we didn't have time to stop for that morning).

That being said, I have decided not to have warm-ups in my class.  Don't be too alarmed.  I can say that only because I have given warm-ups a new name.  They are called bell ringers in my class, and despite the fact that they are just warm-ups in disguise, they actually elicit some interesting conversation...and sometimes even some interesting dances, but that's another story.  So, because I am not quite prepared to put words to what I have been learning lately, and because it will be good to think about God's word before creating my own commentary, I am assigning the following bell ringer.  Set your egg timer for five minutes, and feel free to join me!

In your Writer's Notebook, respond to the prompt below.
On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the level of expectation that you have when praying, 1 being "I'm going to throw this one up in the air and see what happens" and 10 being "I am confident that God will do this."  Do you have a different level of faith depending on the topic of your prayer?  Would your life look different if you fully expected God to answer your prayers?

...lesson to follow...just as soon as I find those darned worksheets!