What is Your Excuse?

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We’re watching John Fooppe with my ninth graders and are talking about several things:

Tough Love
How Excuses Debilitate Us
How We Can Do More than We Think We Can

Watch this video! I show it in my classroom every year.

John Foppe was born without arms. He has done amazing things with his life and this poignant story about his family loving him enough to no longer dress him and what he went through.

My students who have their reasons they can’t study and do well tend to get very quiet as they watch this many with no arms graduate with honors.

My biggest question is how many of us make excuses that actually have the opposite effect of what we planned.

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis has been an educator and IT director in Georgia since 2002. Today, she also works as an instructional technology coach, staying side-by-side with active teachers and students so her work stays grounded in real classrooms.

She's a mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world.

She has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk (radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms), interviewing remarkable educators around the world. Vicki focuses on what unites us — a quest for truly remarkable, life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers, grounded in truth and shared with love.

If you talk to Vicki for long, she'll encourage you to "Relate to Educate," to "innovate like a turtle," or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and runs half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and telling your friends about the work we do here! - Vicki

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