Luck of the Irish

Tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day and that is a holiday that my family celebrates proudly. Growing up, I was always told about my Irish heritage and how we came from Irish immigrants that came to America in the first migration. In the past year, I took one of those DNA tests that you mail in and found that I'm about as much African as I am Irish. (2% each) But St. Patrick's Day is one of those days that everyone gets to be Irish. With that, we think of the phrase, "Luck of the Irish." Historically speaking, that phrase has nothing to do with luck at all. It came from the days when gold and silver mining in America was done predominately by Irish immigrant labor. In those time, mining was more of a guess as to where these precious metals were located. When these Irish miners would find them, the owners used the term Luck of the Irish condescendingly to mean that it was their luck, not their brains, that led them there. While the phrase was meant to belittle the group, I think it speaks more about how hard work leads to luck.

People often think about luck as just good fortune that follows certain people. I've come to think that lucky people are often persistent and determined. When the big play happens for an athlete, we forget the countless hours of practice. When someone wins the lottery, we forget the hundreds of times they lost. So in honor of tomorrow's holiday, may the luck of the Irish be with you in finishing out this school year. It may not be brains that makes it through, but determination and hard work can get us there.

Together We Will

This weekend's state championship basketball game has certainly changed the atmosphere of the school. It feels like that has been almost all that anyone wants to talk about. The community is excited and anxious, but more importantly they are supportive. So many people have come out to buy tickets or t-shirts and to offer their hopes of a win. On Wednesday, the team sat down after practice to eat pizza and listen to a message from Michael Jenkins, a speaker with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The heart of the message came back to three words: Together We Will.

Michael has spoken to the team several times throughout the season and his message has not changed. He wanted each of them to understand that they are not perfect. They make mistakes. We all fall short of what we plan to do from time to time. And while you should be personally accountable for your mistakes if you want to be better, being a part of a team also means that there are others there to pick you up and support you. Alone you may not achieve your goal, but together we will. Being a part of a team means sharing responsibility, sharing celebrations and sharing blame. No one player loses a basketball game. No one teacher achieves school growth. These things happen when everyone works together. It is not always easy or timely. There are a ton of people that thought that we should have been at this game last year. There were fans this year that stopped supporting when we had early losses to South Central and Kinston this year. But somewhere along the way, the messages of grit, determination, teamwork and mutual accountability that so many of you have resonated in your classrooms over the past few years stuck with these young men. They understood that together we will get there.  These lessons became a mentality and they will extend far beyond a basketball court. I hope that each of you know that you are a part of this team. You contributed to this mentality. You held them accountable when they failed to meet expectations and you celebrated their successes. Saturday's game is as much your championship as it is theirs. It is all of ours. Thanks to all of you for putting in that work.

We Need More

I'll admit that I can easily get passionate enough about a topic that I can go to great lengths to argue my point. I can easily get frustrated when people don't automatically see things my way and it is something that I sometimes have to check myself on. Being patient does not come naturally for me. Last week I wanted so badly to espouse my thoughts on guns in schools, our mental health system, failing parents and failing legislators in an effort to deliver what I thought was a common sense approach to school and student safety. But my temper wasn't ready to put that out there yet and I had to be patient. Being combative and argumentative toward others that are a part of the process, often alienates them when we should being finding common ground instead. So in my attempt to regain rationality, I look to positive people that are up lifting.  This week's voting for Teacher of the Year told me that many of you may have been feeling the same way.

Michelle Galloway has always been the same. Her ever-positive, bright smile is infectious. I first met her when she was still teaching for a Pitt County school and she arrived with a group of people that were interested in starting a church and needed a place to host others on Sundays. At that first meeting, I had no idea if she could teach or not (but trust me, she certainly can). I saw someone that cared. She knew many of our current students and that same positivity shined through. I knew right away that I needed her here. Despite working with some of our most needy students, that positivity has been unwavering. It's just hard to have a bad day when you're in her classroom.

The world needs more people like Mrs. Galloway. We have enough hot-tempered ones that are ready to argue all of the time. And while I don't see myself losing those character traits anytime soon, I am also smart enough to know that there are many times when a bright smile and a helping hand will achieve so much more than criticism ever could. We need more of that.

It Got Hotter

Anyone that works with the public will likely develop theories about why attitudes and emotions change in groups of people from time to time. Many blame full moons or changes in barometric pressure on emotional acts or erratic behavior. One of the changes that I believe in is the relationship between temperature and behavior. Many psychological studies show a direct correlation between increased temperatures (especially humid heat) and increases in violent behavior. While most people report preferring warmer weather, statistics show increases in violent crime during the warmer months. The explanation is that heat increases our body temperatures, raising testosterone and increasing our likelihood for being agitated or aggressive. Perhaps that's why the warm front that changed our otherwise seasonable weather early in the week to near 80 degree temperatures also brought a couple of fights and a lot of students that needed to talk some heated situations out. Adults were also impacted this week. I heard from several of you that were highly frustrated and I sat with several parents that genuinely did not know how to deal with a problem and had had enough. 

By comparison, all of this pales to the violence that occurred this week in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was a mental health problem, maybe we should blame gun laws, the government, his parents, students that perhaps bullied him...the list could go on and on. But what can you do? Just like the arrival of summer weather is inevitable, we tend to shrug our shoulders at school violence with a somewhat helpless attitude. We have come to accept this as the new normal. It catches headlines in our media like word of a fight quickly spreads through a school, but also like gossip on a fight, we tend to lose interest quickly and life goes on. What can we do?

It turns out that there is a lot we can do. In the same way we can prevent school fights through good management and supervision, keen observation of students showing signs of being agitated and responsiveness to those signs, we can also take action to lessen the opportunity for school violence of all kinds. None of this is a silver bullet that will prevent all bad things from happening, but it certainly can make a large impact. We can help, even if we cannot change gun laws or eliminate broken homes, we can be the first line of defense while we are here. As the adults that are on that front line of battling school violence of all types, please take time to think about how your practices can impact your students. Your attitude and energy can impact theirs. Your patience can be what deescalates an adolescent temper. Your relationships can make students take a second thought on their actions. Your eyes and ears can be what prevents everything from students that are depressed enough to harm themselves to a fist fight and perhaps even something much worse. We cannot choose helplessness.

Taxes and Tithes

Back when I was teaching, I worked for a couple of years at a church as a youth pastor. That title got me on the church board where I got to learn about the business side of running a church. Monthly reports showed when tithing was up and the church was in the green or when contributions were down and we had to dip into the reserve fund to pay bills. Overall things usually evened out over the year, but if contributions were down for two months, you could almost expect a Sunday with a sermon on tithing. I never really found those sermons uplifting or motivational, but from being at the meetings, I could see how the minister found them necessary. Tithing is optional, and people give different amounts at different times, based on personal preference and individual decisions. Unlike tithing, taxes are mandatory. They accomplish the exact same task. Money is needed to run the services for the group of people. One you do freely because you feel it is right, the other you do out of obligation.

I want us to start thinking of professional development in this same context. Our school (and district for that matter) takes a pretty unique look at PD. We offer choice based on what you need and change up other things based on school initiatives and what our data says that we need. What I hope is that everyone chooses to tithe of themselves the time and attention it takes to get better at the craft of teaching. Working through the PD challenges that Mrs. Garcia and Mr. Shaw send out or getting the most from in-house workshops by following through takes a contribution of your time and effort, and just like tithing, our organization is better as a whole. We are stronger and more purposeful about what we do. But just like a church, when everyone does not contribute, it takes more from the ones that do to make up what is needed. That's when tithing turns to taxing to make things fair for all. The funny thing is that we feel good about tithing, but we loathe taxes.

So this is me, encouraging you to tithe of yourself in the name of professional development and teacher growth. I want you to want to take initiative and personally, I think initiative should be rewarded. (Congratulations to the English department for earning the first department breakfast for the Objectives Challenge!) Personal initiative keeps me from being the tax collector, even if that means I just had to give a sermon on tithing.

David Goggins

I have a bit of a preoccupation with people that are the best at what they do. I think that it is fascinating to think about the effort that a person has to put into a skill to be the best in the world at it. We often think of these achievements in the form of athletics, especially during the Olympics when a World Record is broken. But to be honest, I'm interested at people that are the greatest at really anything. If you're the world best laundry folder, I want to know what inspired you to accomplish that. That's why I was totally hooked when Dr. Creech sent me a link to a U.S. soldier/athlete that has become the world's greatest endurance athlete.

When the Navy Seals ask you to be their poster boy, you know you've made it. David Goggins is the only member of the U.S. Armed Forces that has ever completed SEAL training, U.S. Army Ranger school and Air Force Tactical Air Controller training. He has completed and placed or won many ultra marathons (many of which are over 100 miles), triathlons, ultra triathlons, mountain ascents and bike races. He even holds a Guinness World Record for the most pull-ups in 24 hours. (He did 4,030 in 17 hours before he ripped his hands). Certainly someone with this impressive resume is just talented right? Don't be so sure. David grew up in a physically abusive home and a brutally racist town. He had asthma and sickle cell trait making his health feeble at times. He had a learning disability and barely graduated high school. After high school he sprayed for roaches for a living and grew to 300 lbs. Then he decided to change his life. (Check out his video here. David is known for his "colorful" language, but this video is clean.)

So when he has run all of the races and won all of the awards, when you are known as the Toughest Athlete on the Planet, is it time to retire? Not a chance. For David, it's not about winning acclaim or medals. It's about achieving his personal best. Each race or competition is a test to see what he is made of. He's only racing himself.

So this is a great story, but how does it relate to you and us? I don't realistically expect any of you to feel that you must become the world's best teacher. Being the world's best is insanely rare. What we can learn from David is that anyone can get better and that getting better can happen at any level. The only real ingredient necessary is the determination and desire to be better. We spend a lot of time talking about making students better, but probably not enough time talking about making ourselves better. It comes up a few times a year for your PDP or after an evaluation. But "Goggins-like" growth requires daily attention and evaluation. You have to pay attention to it. That is something we all can do for ourselves.

I Quit

The new year brings about all kinds of thoughts of self improvement for many of us. Our resolutions seek to make us healthier, more focused on a goal or more relationship oriented. We all want to do something better. While most of us may not focus our resolutions on professional goals, the start of a new semester may be a good time to make some classroom resolutions. What do you want to do better or different this semester? Once you determine that, accomplishing and sticking to that goal will likely be more difficult than setting it.

I recently read a great article (you can read it here) about quitting. Not quitting because things are hard or did not go your way, but quitting something because stands between you and your big goals. Doing something new often requires us to stop doing something old, and we often miss that part. Being an educator takes up a great deal of time and that is something that we cannot create. If we need more time to prepare lessons, provide feedback, call parents or implement a new method, we have to quit doing something else. If we are not strategic about what we quit, we will likely either fail at our goal or miss out on something else that was an unintended loss. Think of it this way, if you want to exercise more in the morning, you have to quit hitting the snooze button. If you want to lose weight, you have to quit eating junk food. If you want to read more, you have to watch TV less. When you are goal setting for the start of the new semester, be strategic. What will you stop doing, in order to accomplish something new?