A Main Take-Away

My friend also invited us to respond with one major “take-away” from the article. (A “take away” is the main idea or lesson you take from reading or hearing something new.) That is, what is the one most helpful or memorable lesson from the reading?

This is a common kind of writing exercise.

This is how I tackled it:

1. Answer the question plainly. “This is my main take-away.”

2. Give an example from your reading; in this case, Steven Covey.

3. Give an example or two from your life; in this case, my being a history teacher but teaching English and geography skills, and my son Victor being praised at work for exceptional effort.

4. Give another example from reading; Colin Powell’s story.

5. Wrap-up.

That’s it! Here it is:

My main take-away is: Look for opportunities to influence outside your assigned area

This reminds me of Habit 1 from Steven Covey, “Be Proactive.” Rather than waiting to be told what to do, be proactive and look for ways to be successful outside your specific realm.

As a career teacher, I tried to make that my habit. Rather than just say “I’m being paid to teach history,” I looked for ways to develop students and the whole school and community in as many ways as I could. For example, I taught vocabulary and grammar, even in my history classes, and insisted my students write well. Now and then a student would complain about me, “he grades like an English teacher,” and I took that as a great compliment! When we studied Central and South America in history class, I required the students to learn the countries and capitals of those regions, which the foreign language chair often thanked me for.

Last week my oldest son Victor was on closing duty at his restaurant job, and when he got home that night he told his mom, “The manager said she has never seen someone clean as thoroughly as I did.” I was so pleased to hear that he “looked for opportunities…outside his assigned area,” by going above and beyond.

Victor’s story reminded me of one I read years ago called “My First Promotion” in Reader’s Digest. It was by Gen. Colin Powell. His first job was mopping floors at a soda factory in New York. One day, not to his fault, some crates fell and the bottles and soda crashed to the floor, making a huge mess. Rather than blaming anybody, or being told what to do, Powell quietly picked up a broom and mop and began to clean up the mess. His manager noticed his good work ethic and initiative, and gave him a new job of stacking boxes: his first promotion.

That job with boxes was not too glamorous either, but Powell said he learned a valuable lesson: do the best job you can where you are, and you will go up. In Powell’s case, he became Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and could have probably become president, had he wished to.

I was so pleased to see that same spirit in my son Victor recently.

This is my main take-away.

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