What is Good Enough?

A few years ago I ran across a document that I have used in a number of different situations when discussing expectations and quality work.  The data is a little old, but what I have read on web sites is that many of the numbers would actually be higher.  However, the point is made when one looks at accuracy and excellence.

Over the years there have been numerous arguments regarding grading.  Issues like grade inflation different types of scales have been debated at length.  Teachers have often struggled with defining grades and quality standards.  There is no question in my mind that significant changes need to be made in the way we grade, and in fact, that is happening in a number of places.  However, that is a discussion for another day.

One aspect of the conversation is the issue of quality.  I hear teachers, parents, students and others make the comment “he just wants to pass” or “she is satisfied with getting by.”  I have students tell me “it’s good enough.”  I don’t understand the philosophy, but I also don’t understand why anyone would shoot any lower than the absolute best they can do.  This takes me to the data.  To introduce it, I will suggest that on a 100-point scale, a grade of A should be given for 99% and above.  Hey!  That’s too high, isn’t it?  Well, that actually may be a little low.  Why?  Let’s take a look.

If society, bosses, institutions, or whoever is in power is satisfied with 99% accuracy, then:

·      12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily.

·      114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped each year

·      18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled each hour of each day

·      2.5 million books will be shipped with the wrong covers

·      103,260 income tax returns will be processed incorrectly this year.

·      Two plane landings daily at O'Hare International Airport will be unsafe.

·      291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year.

·      880,000 credit cards in circulation will turn out to have incorrect cardholder information on their magnetic strips.

·      55 malfunctioning automatic teller machines will be installed in the next 12 months.

·      20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next 12 months.

·      114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped this year.

·      107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed each day.

·      315 entries in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of English Language will be misspelled.

·      Every minute 1,314 telephone calls would be misdirected by telecommunication services.

·      22,000 checks would be deducted from the wrong bank account in the next 60 minutes.

·      12 newborn babies would be dropped on delivery each day.

·      Southwest Airlines would have 702 planes crash annually.

·      32,000 missed heartbeats per person per year.

·      268,500 defective tires would be shipped this year.

·      2,000,000 documents would be lost this year by the IRS.

So, when we look at expectations and set standards, where should the bar be set?  If we settle for anything less than the best, is that acceptable?  Certainly the words “I can’t” need to be removed from our language, but what can we expect from students who are stretched by taking eight classes and involved in a multitude of different activities?  By the same token, is that a good thing?  In education circles, the focus is on depth not breadth, with an emphasis on quality of learning over quantity.  At one time, Made in America was the best one could get.  If we are going to sustain our place in the world economy, that bar needs to be raised.

Taking Away The Fat

In some people’s eyes, the title of this entry may not be politically correct. The truth is that I really couldn’t figure out what to call it, and this is what kept coming back. So, if my lack of sensitivity offends, I do apologize. Though understand, in some respects I am pointing my finger at myself! Not long ago in the Journal of the American Medical Association, an argument was made to place extremely obese children in foster care, taking them away from their parents and the environment that some believe contributed to their obesity.

There is a quiet, but increasing number of people from the medical profession and other individuals who are stating that in extreme cases the government should act in the child’s best interest and remove them, and that the idea is to not only support the child, but the whole family. The goal would be to reunite once the child was healthy and the parents took part in a parenting program so that they could provide for a healthier lifestyle for their child. To some, this puts the blame on parents, and maybe it should be, though genetic factors play a role in obesity as well. However, when one looks at the statistics, about two million children in this country are extremely obese. While most are not yet in imminent danger, some already have serious conditions, such as Type-2 diabetes, breathing difficulties and liver problems that could kill them by the time they are 30.

Doctors and researchers cite numerous examples of children that are extremely obese and the complications that have entered their lives. A 90-pound three-year old that by the time she was 12 weighed 400 pounds, had diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, and sleep apnea. Many parents, like the ones of the previously mentioned girl, are not equipped to care for a child, especially one with the problem of obesity. Some legal professionals point to neglect and state that there is already legal authority to take these children from an environment of abuse. A 14-year old in South Carolina that weighed 555 pounds was taken from his mother and placed in the custody of an adult sister. Others say that the government has no right to tear apart families. One thing that I have not mentioned is the out of control medical costs in our nation due to issues related to obesity.

So why do I include an article on this topic here? There are a number of reasons. First of all, while we are fortunate that there are very, very few young people in our area that fall into this category, there are some. And, there are others that are overweight and like a lot of us (me included) need to live a healthier lifestyle. They are our children and we have to be concerned about their welfare, just as we are about all of our kids. We have a group of people that have taken a lead in our school in efforts associated with the Healthy Kids Act. One teacher has initiated a walking club in the mornings, and more time in PE is being dedicated to physical exercise. Our coaches run a morning strength and conditioning program three days a week that is open to anyone, and we have another coach working with young people after school that have a desire to workout. The Food and Fitness group has been doing a number of different things to promote healthier eating, with school gardens being planted, promotional activities around the school, and new food choices being served at lunch. As educators, we can provide opportunities within our programs to help with this problem. What about others?

In our health curriculum, we are making changes to include content that addresses personal health, including diet and exercise. As mentioned previously, we have before and after school programs available for our students, but not nearly enough students take advantage of them. We have tossed around the idea of putting a much heavier focus on fitness in our PE program. We have done some of that this year but could do more. But then, will students take that serious and put forth the kind of effort necessary to improve their fitness? What about teaching “life-long recreational activities” that are currently in the curriculum, like badminton? All of these are questions that we face. There will be some interesting decisions in the future. I just know that it is sad that we are at a point where we are taking kids out of the home because they are so obese.

What is the focus of school?

When I initially made a decision earlier in the school year to limit the amount of time that students were going to miss school for a program because I believe that it was more important for the students to be in the classroom, quite a bit of criticism was directed my way. And quite honestly, no one from outside the building agreed with me, and not everyone on the inside thought I had made a good decision. I am talking about the matinee of the musical in which I decided that taking what amounted to a nearly a full day off of school for those students involved in the play, as well as about three hours for everyone else, did not make much sense when it comes to priorities. My justification was that those in the cast had already had a “run through” in front of their parents earlier in the week to work out the kinks, and that there were three performances over the weekend with plenty of seats available. In some respects I questioned whether it made economic sense to “give away” the musical to high school kids who could be paying customers. And people argued that something like this might be the only cultural experience that some of our kids ever get, which I countered with “most will still see five or six plays and musicals” over the course of their school career with my original proposal, which was a lot more than I saw growing up. But alas, a compromise was worked out and while I did not like the amount of school some kids missed to put on these performances, there are a lot worse reasons that students miss a day.

But this points to the bigger issue that I was focused on – what is the focus of school? In other conversations about other things educational, people (me included) have said, “They want us (school) to do everything.” We have a captured audience of people that most of us are very interested in: children from pre-K through age 18. When someone or some entity wants something done for or done to kids, “tell the school to do it!” After all, that’s where the kids are. When laws are passed about child workers and the Department of Labor has to enforce them, they push their responsibility off on school principals to assure that proper forms are completed when a child under 16 goes to work. When the government makes the decision that students need to be formally taught how to drive, one would think that would fall on the Department of Transportation. Nooooooooooo! That becomes the responsibility of the schools. Not only that, we have to certify that students meet requirements for a school permit on a form that has Department of Transportation right on the top of it! When the oil industry wants kids to know about the multiple uses of petroleum, they send materials to teachers asking them to teach that content to kids, as do the pork producers, corn growers, conservationists, and many, many others. Dental checks, eye checks, and the list go on and on and on. And the funny thing – none of that is included in the Iowa Core or the Common Core!

Public education has been the whipping boy for the past ten to fifteen years. The critics loudly run down what goes on in our schools, misusing all sorts of data to push their various agendas. But those are all big picture issues. Closer to home people have developed their own lists of important things that they want to see happen at school. The matinee is one of those things. When you do the math, if we did not have any interruptions in our school day, we have 135 hours at most to teach a student math, or English, or any other subject. That is just a bit more than three regular workweeks for someone in the labor force. Three weeks! Now, take away six or seven hours for the time taken away for the shortened schedules due to early releases and late starts for whatever the reason. Do you see where I am going with this? It may seem no big deal for the kids to miss a couple of classes to watch the matinee, or to miss because they have to leave early for the track meet, or because they are going on the band trip, or physical therapy, or orthodontist appointments, or to go and read to 3^rd graders, or to do a service project, and on and on.

We have to have time to focus on our purpose, which is to teach students the curriculum that will align with the Iowa Core. That is the purpose of school. And, our top priority must be those essential standards that are included in the core. There has to be shift in the mindset, as I know that for many, music, athletics, and some of the other programs hold a higher priority. The reality is that it can’t. We are not accountable to our political leaders and our taxpayers for football success or all-staters. We are accountable for the academic performance of our students. Therefore, I have a moral obligation to protect class time. It is what we are here for.

Is The Secret To Success Failure?

In the past few months I have spent a bit of time reading about success and failure, specifically as it relates to young people. One of the articles that I read makes a very strong case that young people today must be given the chance to fail in order for them to experience true success. The article appeared in the New York Times and basically made the case that the generation of young people that we have raised in the last ten to fifteen years lack many of the necessary skills and character traits needed to be successful in life because as they were growing up, they rarely or never had the chance to fail. Some of you may say, “Huh?” I say, “Validation!”

As I have grown as an educator and gone through experience after experience with students, teachers, musicians, athletes, parents, coaches, and many others, I have become very observant. And one of the things that I have seen a lot is kids doing some amazing things. I have also seen kids do some things that are really not very amazing, yet those closet to them are pretty doggone impressed. And, I have seen kids get credit for doing something pretty amazing when it reality, they didn’t do much at all to deserve it.

The key factor in this premise is the adults that work with the child, most specifically the parents and teachers, in the case of what I see most of the time. Helicopter parents are the worst things that have happened to young people in the past fifty years, and we have a lot of them. Some of them hover just a little bit, but are still destructive. Others rescue their kids constantly and have basically created a handicapped child. When children always get what they want and do not experience “no,” or whenever something “bad” happens to them and a parent comes swooping in to make the feel better or fix the problem, we have a child that does not know how to solve a problem on their own. I once asked a pretty successful wrestler during his 9^th grade year when he was struggling with Algebra “what is the toughest thing you have ever had to do in your life?” He pondered this question a little bit and then answer, “I don’t think I have ever had to do anything very tough.” And the truth was, he hadn’t! He had the worse case of helicopter parents I had ever dealt with and he did not know how to handle adversity. You see, true success, and a feeling of success are internal and come from a sense of accomplishment. We have to stop taking that opportunity away from our kids.

Most of you have heard the story of how many times Abraham Lincoln failed at various steps in his life prior to becoming President. The character traits of persistence and resiliency were never in question, and he continued in his quest to reach his goals. Why would our kids be any different? I have wondered if one of the best things we could do at school would be to somehow throw up a “wall of failure” and guarantee that every student will suffer some kind of significant set back so that they can pick themselves up and learn from it, problem solving and moving forward. The challenges that our kids are going to face beyond high school have a lot higher stakes and better that they face some adversity now while they are surrounded by a very supportive group of people than when they are out on their own. There is a reason that we have an insane number of 30 year-olds still living off Mom and Dad. They don’t know how to succeed when it is left up to them!

To “pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again” is perhaps the most important of the 21^st century skills that we need to teach our young people. Do we have your permission?