Good Problems

Most of my job involves solving problems. Some are small problems like finding the right class for a student and some are big problems that occasionally involve lawyers or others far above my pay grade. Every now and then I run across a good problem. This week I have been hit with several of those. Good problems involve changing a program or finding funding for something that we would have otherwise not needed without something good happening. 

Our WorkKeys test results presented one of those good problems. Usually when students miss out on getting a silver or better it is because of just one of the three sections. In the past, students have shrugged that off and showed very little care about it. This year, both Mrs. Batchelor and I have been overrun with students wanting to retake the test to prove that they can do better. They don't even seem to mind when we tell them that they have to pay for it and that it doesn't count for the school. They just want to prove that they can do better. I ran into this same problem with several students regarding their Reading Inventory test this week as well. I even had a student come and apologize to me personally with tear-filled eyes for a score in the 1500s because she knew that she could do better. 

Another good problem arose this week as Coach Willis and Ms. Barnett were planning a college trip for juniors. Usually we market these trips to students with a 2.5 GPA or better. When they told me 125 juniors have a GPA of 2.5 or higher I suggested raising it to a 3.0. That didn't help much. 86 Juniors have this GPA. Still far too many for a bus. Even when we went to a GPA of 3.5 we had 52 students in the 11th grade. That's about 25% of that class.

These are good problems to have and more importantly, they show students that do care about their grades and their achievement in school. Students wanting to retest when they do not make it are showing grit. They are not afraid of trying again or trying harder. Students as a whole have a bad reputation for not caring, but it is hard to make that argument for the majority of our students. These "good problems" now present us with an opportunity to capitalize on our students' desire to do better in school and on tests that matter. Now we have to rise to the occasion to solve these good problems for our school.