Abbie Not Abigail

My freshman year of college I took an Intro to Education class, my first of many classes that actually had to do with what I was passionate about and what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Going into the class, I have to admit that I was quite naive when it came to actually knowing about this career that I was beginning to train myself for. (As most people are when they think about teaching). To an outsider, teaching seems like quite the simple process. You’re given a group of kids, you’re given a curriculum, you teach the material.

Ummm not soo fast.... there’s much more that goes into this profession. Which brings me back to my original thought on my Intro to Education class. My professor started the whole semester off, not by talking about what we were going to teach or how to write the best lesson plan. Nope. We talked about “frame of reference”. I had heard this phrase used before, but never really took the time to understand what it really meant.

Sooo here’s what good old Webster’s told me defined this concept:

Frame of Reference: a set of ideas, conditions, or assumptions that determine how something will be approached, perceived, or understood.

My professor dove into explaining how each student we will have has a different Frame of Reference. Heck, even I’m coming from a different perspective and have had different experiences than all of my students, coworkers, or really anybody I come in contact with on a day to day basis, and that effects how I learn and understand things.

I don’t know why, but I started thinking a lot about “frame of reference” today while having a conversation with a co worker in the car. We had spent the whole morning passing out coffee to college students at MSU and U of M Flint, and needless to say, getting back in the car and driving 2 ½ hours home was not what I was in the mood to do. It was one of those moods where I really would’ve rather turned up the radio really loud and wanted to have absolutely zero conversation. Inevitably, conversation was sparked and we started to talk about life. This was my first day working with her and I just wasn’t feeling the small talk. As conversation went on, we both started opening up more and more about life and our backgrounds and where we’re at now.

Let me tell you, the Lord did a number on my heart this afternoon. As she began to open up and let me in on her life, I quickly found out that she had struggled with identity issues all through middle school and high school, went through a nasty divorce with her parents, took care of her mother and siblings for four years as her mother went through stage four breast cancer, watched her own mother pass away, and was introduced to Christ and surrendered everything she had to him.

I need to stop and step back more. I need to understand that every single face that I pass and every person I come in contact with during the day has a different story. We all have brokenness and pain in our lives. We’ve all had experiences that have made us feel like our hearts have been ripped out and stepped on. We all have insecurities and fears. Sometimes, it’s so easy for me to quickly judge someone else and make my own assumptions about their lives and how they are living them.

Yeah, I may have a different Frame of Reference than somebody else. Key word there : DIFFERENT. Not better, not more experienced, but different.  Every person is so unique and has such different things to offer. It’s what keeps things interesting. 

So to my fellow co worker, thank you. Thank you for being willing to open up and share your heart with me today and your frame of reference.