“So what does Morning Glory DO?” The easy answer is that we educate. We teach children so they can have opportunities to better their economic status and understand God and the world He created better. But there is so much more. We could not be stewards of these great opportunities if we were only to teach some Math principles and writing skills. What good are English and Music if our students don’t know who God is or what He wants? How can a young man truly improve his situation in life if he doesn’t understand how to properly use his knowledge in service of the Lord? Surely we are charged with more.
If I say “responsibility,” ‘confidence,” and “integrity” most people agree that these are good qualities to teach. Every student in the US is being taught these words right alongside words like ‘papyrus’ ‘hypothesis’, and ‘eloquence.’ But Morning Glory’s core values are vital to its success. And while they sound like nice words, our core values are best understood against the cultural context in which we work. I imagine every mission, church, school, and business feels the same. Since our audience is mostly from the U.S., in the coming months, we will be giving a bit more detail about Morning Glory’s core values and what they mean for our students and their futures. Though it is difficult to sum up in only one article, we want our readers to understand what we want to do. |
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Morning Glory’s Core Values: #1- Responsibility
You could say that at the core of our core values is responsibility. Before we can expect our students to live lives ripe with excellence, confidence, and integrity, they must first understand that it is THEIR responsibility to make the virtues mentioned above a reality for themselves. I won’t worry about a Webster definition here. For Morning Glory, responsibility is the idea that each person is accountable for their own actions and the consequences, good or bad, that are manifested from those actions.
Lori always says: “Poverty is a mindset.” What she means is that when someone is in poverty, it is a very real temptation for them to blame their circumstances. This starts a vicious cycle in the mind of the impoverished. The logic can be: “If someone else is responsible for my poverty, someone else too must be responsible for getting me out of this situation.”
This leads to several negative effects, the foremost of which are helplessness and the search for aid from others. People with this mentality essentially look for hand-outs and/or welfare from others because they think they are powerless to better their own circumstances. Morning Glory exists today because a few people had a dream to offer a help to the people who didn’t have access to quality education. But there is a line between “help” and “hand-out.”
This mentality isn’t always limited to finances either. All too often we see people, students and adults in many cultures, listing the reasons something can’t be done. “It’s too hard.” “We don’t know how,” or “Well, let’s just see what happens [if we leave it like it is].” It’s not hard to read between the lines to see the helpless mind set. This worldview is the most dangerous for an impoverished culture. More than illiteracy and confused numbers, this is the enemy Morning Glory strives against. And our solution is teaching responsibility.
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Lori told me about an example in which a mom came to her asking for help. She wanted her kids to have an education, but didn’t have the money to pay for it. Essentially, she wanted Lori to give her kids free education. Lori, under guidance from the Spirit countered her offer. Lori asked her about her abilities and experience and offered the mother some money to invest in chickens. The mother was to buy some little chicks and raise them and sell them. When those chickens were sold, Lori taught the mom to use a portion to invest in more chickens. The other part is used to pay back the loan and pay for necessities. Today, that mom sends pick-up trucks full of chickens every morning. Lori taught her that it was HER responsibility to work for the life she wanted. The mother has no more excuses and no more blame. She know she makes her own decisions. We hope all those decisions honor God.
So the responsibility we want to see from our students is a lot like that mom and is much more than economical. We want our students to know that they are in charge of moving their futures in the direction they want. If they want good grades, they have to work for it. If they more possibilities, they must work for years to get there. If they want championship trophies, it won’t be given to them. They should know they need to earn it. They need to know that if they misbehave, it was THEIR choice to get involved in the problem. And if they do well in anything, it is because they chose to overcome. We want the students to know that they are responsible to God for their decisions, actions, and relationship with him. They cannot allow their circumstances or other people to define who they are or what they do. It is their responsibility to seek out God and follow His guidance in every aspect of their lives.
Those lessons are taught many days, in many ways at Morning Glory. They are in our grade books and conduct reports that are sent to the families. They are in the conversations at teachers’ desks. Responsibility is literally trumpeted at every school band practice where are students put in the work to be the best band around. Responsibility hangs in the air in every meeting with the Director. We teach responsibility in every homework assignment, every class outing, every competition, and every time the Spirit gives us a chance to teach these students how to use the knowledge that God gives them in the classroom. The students need to be responsible. They need to learn what responsibility is. As long as God puts students in the desks, Morning Glory will teach and example just that.
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