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The Meaning of Success

December 8, 2015

All of the MHSAA’s fall season tournaments have ended. A small sliver of our hundreds of member school teams are clutching championship trophies.

Thankfully, those few trophies do not define success.

Some teams won their first ever MHSAA Regional title this fall, and a few more won their first MHSAA District championship ... and those go down in their local lore as the most successful teams in those schools’ histories. Deservedly so.

But even those situations do not define success adequately.

Some teams had their first winning record in many years. Some teams didn’t accomplish that goal but won twice as many games as the year before; and they rightfully claimed their seasons a success.

Some teams lost almost every game but kept pulling together without back-biting or complaining. And that too is success.

I once told a team of T-ballers I was coaching that they had a perfect record: six wins and six losses. Six times they had to deal with victories; six times they had to deal with losses. That’s also a good definition of success.

And finally ... singer/songwriter Sam Baker has written this lyric about his aspirations to play professional ice hockey: “I failed well; and that made all the difference.”

Fixing Schools

August 16, 2013

Our fall sports have begun and, as usual, our good coaches are focusing on fundamentals during these early weeks of practice and play, especially if they are trying to bounce back from some losing seasons. Meanwhile, I’ve been thinking about the fundamentals for fixing schools themselves.

If we really would get serious about a comeback season, we would . . .

  1. Equip the best teachers to work in the worst places.
  2. Provide the highest pay to the teachers working in the lowest grades.
  3. Emphasize   teachers more than technology,
                          pre-Kindergarten more than college prep, and
                          smaller more than larger.
  4. Encourage   fight over flight,
                          tutors over transfers,
                          school improvement over school choice, and
                          investment over vouchers.
  5. And, for Pete’s sake, we would allow public schools to start classes as early as they see fit, even next Monday, not two weeks and a day later as state law mandates. Longer is better than shorter.

And sooner is better than later for putting these fundamentals into our game plan for education.