I wrote this letter to Jason and it captures the things that I celebrate today and it documents why I support Will Sutherland as a good housemaster.
JASON,
I spoke with Will about the need for writing.
Writing organizes the brain.
We can hold perhaps three ideas at the same time in our head while we are talking.
By writing, we can places those three ideas on paper, then go get three more ideas, and then we can put those three new ideas on paper. Now we have six ideas that can interact with each other. We have time and space to analyze our thoughts.
If we talk through a problem or situation, we have at most three possible ideas that we can work with (most of use). that’s why writing is so helpful.. We can put the ideas on paper. we can capture the idea. and then use our power (even days later) to see something that we can’t see in the moment.
This is one reason why it is helpful to have several people looking at our thoughts. More people, more experience, more help. Three heads are better than one.
(There is often wisdom in the daily expressions that grandmothers tell us).
I have told students about the Robert Burns couplet:
What a gift He would gie us
To see ourselves as others see us.
gie is a short form of “GIVE”.
What a gift it would be if we could see ourselves as others see us.
This does not mean “listen to every criticism that people make.” It means that sometimes God or some great power is talking through other people to reach us.
I’m writing to you these ideas because today’s journal entry for me is about stock photos. People can donate photos to STOCK FREE IMAGES and share the photos with other people.
The other reason I’m writing to you is to remind you of the power you have (and every young person has) with sharing time on Facebook and on skype.
There are four billion people on the planet who want to speak with the American accent. They want to practice speaking English. If you walked into a language school in France or in India, and said, “I’m here to volunteer two hours a week to help a local person with their accent,” you would be embraced by most language schools. You could meet dozens of people who would want you to help them with their accents. This is a program that I’ve encouraged in Fort Lauderdale to introduce U.S. teenagers to people from other countries.
U S people generally are monolingual — we will never get fluent in another language. However, by being generous with our time, we can help people improve how they pronounce words and how they can avoid false friends (in french, faux amis).
for example, in French you can use the word http://tinyurl.com/falsefriends2000
French faux ami
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English translation
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English look-alike
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French translation of look-alike
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actuel
|
current, present
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actual
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réel, exact
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actuellement
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currently, at the moment
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actually
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en fait
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agenda
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diary
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agenda
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ordre du jour (de réunion)
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allure
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pace, speed; appearance; style
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allure
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attrait, charme
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assister à
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to be present at, attend
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assist
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aider
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attendre
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to wait (for)
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attend
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assister à
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avertissement
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warning
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Jason, I encourage you to get into the minds of other people. That’s what Will and your mother and others want you to hear. ZIG ZIGLAR says “You can get whatever you want in life if you HELP enough people get what they want."
Your aunt has an expression: We are here to serve each other.
“Our schools continue to work…”
davit sent this video to us.
Why don’t you write to him: davit.vanyan95@mail.ru
You can deliver what I cannot deliver: the US accent from a young voice. You are under 30 years old, so that makes you interesting to people like Davit in Armenia and Esraa in Alexandria Egypt.
People in Armenia have a history of sadness and your email messages, sent twice a week to answer Davit’s questions and to spend perhaps ten minutes a week on SKYPE with a stranger, that would be a good use of your time on skype.
SKYPE AND TELEPHONE AND FACEBOOK>….
I’d like to take a moment to explain my theory about how I became an adult. I was a self-centered kid, 15 years old, when I met Will Sutherland. I was enjoying Gilligan’s Island tv every day and Laugh-in on a weekly television schedule. I walked home from school in Honolulu. I had a comfortable childhood. I didn’t have to learn how to survive under difficult situations.
Then I went to a boarding school in Switzerland. I learned from people who cared about me.
AT SCHOOL I was isolated from my family for 16 weeks. I could go home for a month in December, April and July. The rest of the time I was in a boarding school where I had limited pocket money (so i couldn’t eat in restaurants with friends). I spent fifteen minutes every morning thinking about the words selected by a teacher .. we called it “Morning Meditation” and it was a highlight of my dray. I learned some lovely ideas and heard quotations that I still use in my life.
I never let schooling get in the way of my education.
Whatever is true, pure, lovely, honest, just and of good report, think about those things. Philippians in the Bible.
What could we learn if we flipped around one of our traditions? Usually we receive gifts on our birthday. what would be different if we GAVE gifts to people who mean something to us on our birthday? This would mean that we would receive gifts throughout the year from people who are having birthdays.
Do you see the power of a morning “thought for the day”? This is why I am asking you to carry a camera and to record anything that Will Sutherland says. Someday he will retire or he will die. Both of those events will take place. Until then you are the only person who has the equipment and the mission to capture the words of a great house mater. Will Sutherland has the ability to use tools from his 20 years of house mastering and his lifetime of thinking about the Betty Sutherland School of Raising Young People… and he does not have a set of recommendations or a collection of his stories.
I hope you will take time to read this book.
Will Sutherland paid you the highest compliment that I know … and please remember that I once applied to get into his house and he refused to take me. He would like to keep you on after your visit ends at the end of April. You will have been there three months and the local authorities will want you to move on, but Will is thinking about how to make you a student and so that will qualify you for a student visa or some sort of arrangement.
That is a great honor, Jason, and you are receiving guidance that millions of young people who lack direction need. Will Sutherland has guided hundreds of people with his suggestions, helping them find new careers. I hope that you will take advantage of this opportunity to be a recorder of his voice. Will’s voice has a special urgency that says, “You better listen to this now or you might have to hear it again when the cosmos is less patient.” Will has the ability to deliver useful information (that parents try to deliver) in a way that young people can hear it — if you can’t “get it” from a parent or relative, then you will probably hear it and understand the advice when Will speaks it.
I would like to have more of Will’s stories on video. This is why I sent you to France … to capture the videos. Yes, I’d like you to have the same strong moral center, the same respect for my body that I have. I gained that respect while at Aiglon College. I could have descended on a path of pleasure, but I heard what John Corlette and other teachers told me about the body and the mind. I was given a mind to develop. My way of saying “thanks” to the Universe for letting me live here is to develop that mind. I try to put good, pure, honest, just and true things into my head. I try to put good things in my body. I avoid large amounts of alcohol and other drugs because I respect my body. My mind might be bored, but I don’t use my body to entertain my mind.
Our lives are what we make of them.
We are what we eat (and think, and hear)
What I say becomes my reality. I don’t use bad language because I don’t want to attract that energy of negativity and harshness to myself. That’s why I don’t listen to crap music (rap) which is harsh, but I focus on lyrics that have value.
Here is one reason why I’m a teacher:
Everybody's running, but half of them ain't looking
What's going on in the kitchen, but I don't know what's cookin'
They say I gotta learn, but nobody's here to teach me
If they can't understand it, how can they reach me
I guess they can't, I guess they won't
I guess they front, that's why I know my life is out of luck, fool
Coolio in those lyrics is saying that teachers don’t take time to listen to him.
I’ll be direct: Will Sutherland will die before I do. I want to use his voice to train teachers. I want to go into my library of quotes from Will to share his wisdom with students and parents who are looking for advice. instead of me telling “what I remember Will Sutherland said,” I want to give them what Will said.
Your mom asked me to take you on as a project. I agreed to invest myself in your development because of her. When I first met you, I thought, “I don’t know why I said yes to the mother.” There is so much of you that is sweet and nice and lovable, but there is so much that is annoying and disappointing. Let’s focus on your choice of using weed and tobacco and alcohol. If you continue to put those poisons in your body, you will alter what you were born with.
Your lack of precision in your language is “endearing” but worrisome. Lack of clarity in speech suggests a lack of clarity and focus in thought. I am very worried that you will forget to analyze every step of what led to the dog attack. I hope that by sharing these concerns with you openly and with Will Sutherland that you will be moved to write precisely what you did and chose not to do that led to the dog attack.
The ego is strong … that’s good! If a slippery ego can survive the criticisms of hundreds of people, it will endure. To make a change in an ego, strong measures are needed and I want to point out that you have passed an important stage. I feared that you were so committed to being a surfer dude that you would reject what Will Sutherland is proposing. I am no longer worried about you because Will has said that he would like to figure out how to keep you as an assistant for a few more months. Perhaps for another sailing or perhaps (if the authorities will allow) until the end of the summer.
I’m not sure precisely what is available in Will’s mind, and it depends if the marketing effort makes the boat project feasible and possible. But please remember this: Will Sutherland does not invest his time in “a lost cause.” You have hope for your development and Will sees that. You would be on an airplane back home if these words were not true.
Steve
AGAIN, please take time to serve:
(1) write to Davit in Armenia. Try to spend time on Facebook or skype with him to help him practice English. Give him guidance.
ESRAA
Esraa Abdalla <esraa.abdalla4@gmail.com>,
Davit Vanyan <davit.vanyan95@mail.ru>
DAVIT
(2) Carry a video camera when you can. Record moments around the harbor. The sounds of the city and nature are delightful. Those moments can be posted on youtube. If you don’t know how, then I’ll create a special channel called “St Malo by JASON” and there will be at least 200 views for every video you post. or that you send me and then I’ll post the videos.
(3) PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE record Will’s voice when he is discussing your future and any time that he is talking. Some of those recordings will be helpful. There is a videographer, Jill Nobels, who went to the same school that Will worked at and I attended, and she wants video footage of “what takes place on the boat.” She’s making a documentary and she’ll be there June 17-21 approximately. GIVE HER THE FOOTAGE THAT CAN CAPTURE WHAT TAKES PLACE ON THAT BOAT. There is magic taking place in your head and you might not be aware of it.
(4) Do not call your friends. Do not chat with them on Facebook. Do not fritter your time away from being present. Imagine that it costs $5 a minute to make a phone call. Only if someone is in the hospital does a call arrive.
IMAGINE THAT You are in Switzerland with a great teacher. You turn to people around you. You can write to your mom, to me, to your friends, but you make it an EMAIL and you write at least THREE IDEAS and you use EXAMPLES. You can write STORIES with DETAILS, and specific things you see and hear and smell and feel. That’s how a mind gets reshaped. Isolate yourself from your previous world and make time (as I have right now ) to write what you are thinking. Then you will become a powerful and helpful person on this planet. People will start to pay attention to what you are saying because they can listen and read and analyze and re-read your words. What did you say six months ago? I don’t remember. NOT EXACTLY. But if you send an EMAIL message, someone can read it 20 years form now and become affected and inspired. Your life on this planet means something when you put your words on paper or in an email message...
IF YOU INSIST that you don’t want to learn how to ten-finger type, then you can handwrite your ideas and take a photo and I will transcribe what I see. That is your choice. but I am VERY inspired by the power of writing to reshape a mind. The brain actually build connections (synapses) when vocabulary is shaped and refined.
the process that Will uses is old fashioned and worked in the 1970s. “Modern techniques” have taken away from the values of the old ways. It is time to record and keep the methods that Will uses so that new teachers can see the value in using Rudyard Kipling quotes.
creating difficult chores for the body so that the mind can be captured.
making the body tired so that the mind can be reorganized.
learning our limits
planned hardships
delayed gratifications
learning to be comfortable with discomfort.
These lessons are taught to students by parents but sometimes parents need to hire someone like Will to educate their children. That worked for me and I hope you agree that it is working for you. Let’s both celebrate this method by recording what Will says and how he guides you so that you can document the method for other young people to follow. “Here are recordings of Will Sutherland that can be used by any young person.” that would be a powerful youtube channel. And YOU could be the person who delivers these lessons from Will.
If you are worried about your privacy, we can edit out your name and your particular details so that you don’t have to be embarrassed. I am happy to share with people the facts that I almost committed suicide, that I was depressed and that I was a lazy fellow who just enjoyed reading comic books and watching TV. I turned into a person who now spends most of my time listening to other people’s problems. It is a beautiful life when I serve others. I am here to serve others.
Zig Ziglar says “You can get anything you want in life if you just help enough other people get what they want.”
So please please please make lots of short videos. Record the town and record Will Sutherland…..
Steve
I’m posting the PUBLIC portions of this email on my journal. These are my journal thoughts today.
