For this connect 10, I wanted to highlight how this research had a moment where one of the statistics made me have an emotional connection. In my personal life, I have been having a hard time with my major. The more I shadow teachers and other educational specialist, I fell that I want to make more of a difference. When assigned this topic, I really wanted to find a way to not only push me out of my comfort zone in researching, but I wanted to explore all the issues of the educational system and find a passion. After reading that initial article, I thought I was going to focus my paper on how the schools are being funded differently and why that was wrong. As I was attempting to further my research, I came across three statistics that depicted an interesting common thread to how funding was different and why. This reoccurring theme was special education. As hard I have been trying to disconnect myself from it, deep down, my passion has always been to help special education students. Each time I am out in public and I see a child who is has a physical, emotional or learning disability; I can’t help but give the family and child a hug and tell them how wonderful I think they are. After reading how the statistic suggest that there is a growing rate of special education students up north, where my family is moving this summer, I instantly knew that God was calling me to add on a major that would further satisfy my passion in life. More importantly, this new self discovery provided a motivation for my deeper reading and researching for this particular assignment. One thing I have learned about myself is that reading is like pulling teeth. I don’t want to do and I will use every excuse to try to talk myself out of doing it. After having this moment of emotional connection, I realized that I had been looking up articles and other statistics until 1:30 in the morning. In my educational experience, I have never had an assignment that seemed so easy to read and research things about. Overall, I think this learning and connecting moment was not only beneficial to my paper, but to my decision on what I want to do with my life.
This post reminded me of a service I attended at Pine Lake Oxford Church. On this Sunday morning, the pastor was talking about how God gave each of us a spiritual gift. He also placed emphasis on how we should recognize our gift and pursue it out to spread the word of God. I think my spiritual gift is the gift of teaching. While I was reading this post, I realized that in order to conquer my personal struggle of making a bigger difference was to live out my spiritual gift of teaching in my church. With this being said, I think that this connection between my educational purpose and my spiritual purpose is so important and shows the magnitude of connections you can make as an individual.