But I did share with her son (and hopefully parents and students who are reading this article) the following practical tidbits of wisdom that I have learned over the years regarding education:
1) Know something about everything and everything about something — In other words, be a well-rounded individual. Have an unending desire to learn something new each day of your life. At over 70 years of age, I’m still learning something new every day. A lot of this learning comes from the kids that I teach in our local school libraries as a substitute. Parents, you’d be surprised at what you can learn from your kids (see here), if you just take the time to listen to them.
2) Acquire a dollar paperback dictionary from any Dollar Store and put it in your backpack — Whenever you come across a word you don’t know or understand, look up the word and find out its meaning (you can also find word origins online). By doing this, your vocabulary will not only increase, but your ability to read and comprehend what you read will dramatically increase.
3) Develop a love for reading as Abraham Lincoln did — While there some life lessons that you can’t learn out of a book, there is still some very valuable and practical information that you can learn from books (i.e., language, math, science, history, geography), that will prove very valuable on down the road of life. My favorite genre of books to read are biographies of famous people, for you can see what made these folks successful in life, even though many times, they had very difficult challenges to overcome.
4) Most importantly, read, study and make personal application of the Bible — The Bible not only contains the wisdom of the ages (see Proverbs), but it will tell you where you came from (Genesis 2:7; Job 33:4), why you’re here on earth (Isaiah 43:7; Matthew 5:14-16), and where you are going when your earthly life is over (Ecclesiastes 12:7).
—Mike Riley, Gospel Snippets
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