- If your child is not getting enough play time in the game. Don't harass that poor volunteer coach, swallow your pride, get out with your child and improve their skills... (and no, I am not the coach...)
- If your company is losing money. Don't tell everyone how great the company is.Swallow your pride, work hard and turn things around.
- If your district or school fails to meet AYP. Don't go around advertising that you have a great district for the few, or a great school. (email link from RAS) Swallow your pride, stop focusing on the fluff and resolve those achievement gaps. Now that will be significant !!!
It is fine and healthy to celebrate good news. So I am happy for RAS and the students.
However it is unfortunate when people start celebrating low priority successes while failing at the important things. I am concerned that people will begin to fool themselves into a false sense of contentment / pride... Thereby losing the energy and drive to fix the important things... (ie P1 - P3, or excellent effort /skills)
As always, opinions welcome !!!
4 comments:
In a different world, school districts could focus all their energy and all their resources on doing their job, teaching our kids. But that isn't the world we live in, and in the one we do live in, politics is a concern. In order to retain the public support needed to operate, schools must engage in a continuous campaign of public relations, of keeping the residents of our community of what our schools are doing. In this world, that's expensive, that diverts resources that arguably might be better employed in the classroom, but it's also necessary. At least, I don't see a viable alternative.
First of all, I was tired and in a grumpy mood.(sorry.. at least I am rested now..haha) Second, I agree that celebrations and PR are absolutely necessary and beneficial.
With that said, how do we keep administrators, teachers and parents focused on job 1.
All kids in our local school district leave school ready to join our society as productive citizens.
Instead people talk of being proud of their unique web page, different activities, niche offerings, school decor, etc... This is great as long as they do not ignore the "unmentionable problem" in the corner.(ie failure to meet AYP) To be truly GREAT, we need to succeed at job 1.
I'll get off my soap box for now...
"With that said, how do we keep administrators, teachers and parents focused on job 1."
Lots of ways. One of them is not to assign them jobs 2 to a million. Another is to cultivate an attitude of respect towards our teachers and school employees generally.
I know I have always been proud of District 281. I see nothing wrong with that. Just between you and me, John, I have always thought the status of pride as one of the seven deadly sins was somewhat questionable. Maybe it should be demoted to the 14 or so iffier sins.
Pride definitely has 2 sides.
On the positive, it gives us self confidence to stand up for our opinions, take risks, speak with confidence, etc.
On the negative, it clouds our view of reality, makes learning new things difficult, makes us condescending to others, etc. Baseball Bats
I think the wise folks that put it on the top 7 list probably have it right. I think folks can be self confident and decisive without pride. Though I am sure we talking semantics and degrees now.
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