A Message for Teachers.....Be Like Mike

Vol. 1                                                       Issue 20

                WHY NOT THE BEST?

A young ensign, a recent Annapolis graduate, dressed impeccably in a new white dress uniform, sat nervously before a silver-haired Admiral who leaned forward to question this clean-cut Georgia farm boy of his qualifications to serve in the nation’s fleet of nuclear submarines.  They talked of world events, history, literature, duty, honor and country.  To each question, he provided the Admiral with eager and appropriate answers.  Then, at the end of the interview, the old Admiral finally asked of the young officer’s record at the Naval Academy.  With pride Ensign James Earl Carter, Jr., announced that he graduated in the top of his class.  "Very well, Mr. Carter,” replied Admiral Hyman Rickover, “But did you always do your best?”  Candidly the future President replied that he had not.  “Why not the best, Ensign Carter?  Why not the best…”

            Decades later another son of the south was asked to account for his performance leading the Chicago Bulls to their fourth NBA Championship.  Michael Jordan, the best athlete ever to play the game, with tears of emotion choking his words, dedicated the game, the series, the victory and his moment of elation to his late father, a victim of a senseless murder.  Such emotion, though touching and profoundly moving, was not unexpected. After all, it was Father’s Day – the young man’s memory of his last championship and his last celebration with his father merged with the moment at hand.  Yet, right in the midst of a most perfunctory interview, he said something else. “Those guys in the minor leagues, I want to thank them too…” Those unnamed minor league baseball players with whom he had spent an eighteen month sabbatical from the game he was born to play – an eighteen month reality check.  Michael Jordan, toiling with a bunch of major league wannabees.  Perhaps one in a hundred of these players would ever suit up for a big league team.  “I wonder why they work so hard?”,  Michael must have mused.  “That one can’t hit a curve ball; the blond headed boy could never beat out a bunt; the big guy from Brooklyn has a rubber arm.  Why do they give it their all every day?  Don’t they know that they’ll never make it?  Then one day he received an answer in the form of a question: “Why not the best?”

            We need to thank those minor league baseball players too.  While few of us have ever seen Babe Ruth hit a home run, or Jim Thorpe compete in an Olympic Decathlon, or Ben Hogan strike a golf ball in the U.S. Open, we have seen the very best basketball ever played by the very best basketball player who has yet to play the game.  He played not for money nor acclaim.  He gave his best for the love of the game – a lesson learned from some rubber armed minor leaguer whose name we’ll never care to remember. 

            Why did you elect teaching as you life’s work?  It certainly is not for the money nor the fame.  What then is it that brings you back every year?  Each of you are talented professionals who can make your way in this world in other professions.  What brings you back?  What keeps you going day after day, week after week, and year after year?  Have you stopped lately to think about what you are doing?  Perhaps you are afraid that if you do, you will never come back, but I am willing to take that risk.  If you are honest with yourself, you return each year for the same reason that you began teaching.  Inside each teacher is a spark, a small flame that burns incessantly.  You want to make a difference – a difference in the lives of our children.

            I recently heard a speech give by Charlie Davis, former Wake Forest basketball great.  He spoke about neighborhoods.  His neighborhood as a young boy was the streets of Harlem.  He described the poverty and the neglect, but surprisingly, he also described the love and attention that he received.  Even in Harlem in the 1960’s there was a neighborhood.  People knew his name, celebrated his accomplishments and cried with him over his failures.  “Where are our neighborhoods today?” he asked.  Even outside blighted inner cities, the streets of suburbia no longer resemble the neighborhoods that many of us grew up in.  Neighbors often do not know the person next door, much less care if anything good or bad happens to them.  Often our mobile society never allows any of us to put down roots anymore.  So where can we find our neighborhoods today?  “Right here in our schools,” Charlie Davis proclaimed, “may be the last vestige of neighborhood.”  It may be the only place where children find anyone who cares, or at least take time to care.  You know their friends, their frustrations and failures.  You pick them up when they fall and kick them in the tails when they slack off.  Most of all in this neighborhood, much as in the neighborhood Charlie Davis described, you share their dreams.  What a privilege it is to be a teacher!  You really do touch the future!!

           

In life, I have discovered that with every privilege you will find that there are corresponding responsibilities.  Few recognize it.  Certainly not the general public nor our politicians.  Occasionally a few parents think about it.  Yet, each of you knows it far too well.  Public education is the last best hope for a generation of our children!  The public rarely notices your successes in society, but your failures fill welfare rolls and prison beds.  If you do not succeed in turning on a child to learning by the time he leaves this school, chances are he will never find the spark on his own.  You are the last hope our society has for the future and it is a shame that no one else but your really understand how important you role is. 

            So what are you going to do about it this year.  All of you are excellent teachers.  You have proven yourself over the years.  Your students will, over all, be better than others in the system.  Most will pass and most will not menace society when they grow older.  At the end of the year, our parents and administrators will tell you what a good job you have done.  However, if you are honest with yourself, only you will be the judge of your success.  How will you measure it?

            The late Jim Valvano often said that in the final analysis there are really only two kinds of basketball players.  One kind is the player who shoots the ball and you expect it to go in and when it does not you are surprised.  The other kind is the player who shoots the ball and you don’t expect it to go in and you are surprised when it does.  The successful team is the one which has more of the former kind of players rather than the latter.  With schools a similar principle applies.  In the final analysis there are really only two kinds of teachers.  The first kind is the teacher who looks at a problem, a task or a student and asks “why?”.  The other kind is the teacher who asks “Why not?”  If  your school is to live up to its responsibility – If you really are the last vestige of a neighborhood – the last hope for a generation of children.  If you really want to share the dreams of children, you have to ask not “why?” but “why not?”

            Why do you return each year?  Why do you care so much?  What is it that drives each of you?  If you ask this question this year, do not be surprised if you hear Michael Jordan whisper – “Why not the best?”