Excellence counts…and that is the reason for Lawton Academy to exist! We expect our students to strive for excellence. However, the question becomes, “Whose excellence are we using as a standard of measure?” I can say as the founder of the school that we began with the standard labeled, “What Colleges and Universities Expect Students to Know,” when they apply for admission. That was back in 1998. Our standards have been reworked several times during the twenty-three years we’ve been in existence. The majority of changes have been based upon the research findings from the international tests recognized by School Administrator Associations.
Edna Hennessee was an extraordinary business woman who changed Lawton forever with her plans, developments, and love of community. She expressed lessons learned in a little book called, “It Takes So Little to be Above Average.” She was so right! So many people are willing to sit by and watch life happen, while others are busy making things happen! Basically, that is what we want our students to be able to do: make things happen!
I believe that God has a plan for every life; however, a person must listen and learn skills which will help him work out that plan. As E. Stanley Jones taught, “If we do not have guidance, then it is probably withheld for one of two reasons: we are untrained, or we are unwilling. Guidance doesn’t just happen. It is a result of placing oneself in the way of being guided. A radio doesn’t just happen to pick up messages; it is tuned in by deliberate intention, and then it receives.”
Teaching young people to believe in their abilities is a large part of my mission at LAAS. That is one reason we accept students who have learning disabilities along with their giftedness. Nothing is more satisfying than helping a student realize his/her true potential! I am able to speak from experience because my entire life path has been one miracle after another. As God revealed His plan for my life, I have been able to help students rise above the crowd and become “Smarter than the average bear!”
Again quoting E. Stanley Jones, we were created with great potential which is often lost in the business of life. “God has three things in mind in reference to us: purpose, plan, and person. God has a purpose to make you the best that you can be. God has a plan that embodies that purpose. God has a plan for every life…In the silence, you listen for the unfolding of that purpose and that plan. You literally become the plan and purpose of God, an embodied thought of God, the word made flesh…A piece of wire disconnected is one thing, but a piece of wire attached to a dynamo and an engine is quite another thing. Alone, you are one thing; attached to God’s purposes, you are quite another thing.”
I believe that with God, nothing is impossible. It doesn’t take a lot of people to accomplish things, just a small number who are determined and disciplined. Someone said, “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think, and the rest of the people would rather die than think.” It is that five percent that changes situations. Dr. Jones gave some excellent examples of the five percent: “A handful of people made Germany Nazi and Italy Fascist. In 1914, someone said that to find two Communists in Paris (the home of Communism) would be a wonder, to find four would be a miracle. And yet in five years, the Communists had captured Russia and challenged the world. Less than a hundred people produced both the Renaissance and the Reformation in Europe. Dr. W. H,. Welch of Johns Hopkins, with a small disciplined group of young doctors around him, changed the medical life of America for decades.”
As we are faced with a virus which has caused a major pandemic in today’s world, I read a sign which again energized my calling to help students accomplish excellence. It read: “The Delta and Omnicron variant are no match for the Alpha and Omega!”
- Kay