Back in the Game
September 8, 2015
Finally, at long last, public schools can begin again to open their classrooms to educate students. Most of our state’s college and university classes began a week or more ago. Most of our state’s private secondary schools began classes a week or more ago. Schools in most other states began a week or more ago.
But Michigan public schools stumble to the starting line long after the race has started almost everywhere else.
Each week during the four weeks since I last wrote about this topic, students in Michigan’s public schools have fallen further and further behind other students across the U.S. and the planet.
When colleges complain that our students are not college ready, think about this. When other states win the new business we seek for Michigan, think about this.
A school year start that competes with the rest of the nation and a school year length that competes with the rest of the world – these are two changes Michigan needs to give us a fair chance.
But Michigan public schools stumble to the starting line long after the race has started almost everywhere else.
Each week during the four weeks since I last wrote about this topic, students in Michigan’s public schools have fallen further and further behind other students across the U.S. and the planet.
When colleges complain that our students are not college ready, think about this. When other states win the new business we seek for Michigan, think about this.
A school year start that competes with the rest of the nation and a school year length that competes with the rest of the world – these are two changes Michigan needs to give us a fair chance.
In Others’ Words
August 22, 2014
I’ve read and heard multiple times – so I’ve come to believe it’s at least partly true – that one of the techniques that marketing departments or agencies use when developing campaigns to promote a product or service is to look at it from the consumer’s, customer’s or client’s perspective.
The point is often brought home that if management would use this technique as much as marketers, then management would be more effective and would label itself, rather than marketers, as the “creative team.” It chafes me to hear a CEO say he or she wants to know what “creative” has to say about a sponsorship initiative before the CEO will offer an opinion.
Thinking about what our customers want doesn’t require that leaders suspend their personal beliefs or reverse experience-based opinions. It merely asks that we look at things from a different and sometimes even opposite point of view. And to be truly revealing, it asks that we try to put into words where other people stand on a particular topic.
It asks us to actually try to describe what our customers see from where they stand and what they say they want. For example, in our work, it would ask administrators to think about and actually describe what coaches want, and vice versa. And it asks both coaches and administrators to think about and put into their own words what student-athletes want, and what their parents want.
This has been an ongoing part of my life, provoked I suppose by my marriage of 42 years to a woman whose political views often point 180 degrees from my own. And this approach has been especially enlightening on school sports’ most troublesome topics, some of which we are tackling at this time, like ...
- Out-of-season coaching rules
- Junior high/middle school programming
- Health and safety mandates