Grab a Shovel

Our students, each and every one of them, deserve the future of promise our great nation is reputed to offer.  Yet our schools loiter in the mire of past traditions.  There is so much that can be done to improve these students' experiences of learning, opportunities to become, and their level of preparedness to help move the world forward to better outcomes, but the schools that are supposed to be helping them, enabling them, encouraging them, and empowering their progress are actually the millstones around their necks.

So many who work in the school system claim to want a better tomorrow, but they just don't seem to know what is possible, pragmatic, or worth doing.  Instead they add more and more slag to a growing mountain of resistance to change.  They are like boulders that dig their heels in and refuse to move.  By now we have mountains of resistant boulders in every school system and every district in America.

I am not an insider.  I am a parent who has learned enough to know what is possible, what is available right now, and what is extremely doable,  If someone like me can learn about these things, why can't... or... why WON'T those who lead look up from their well-worn and circular path to see what is "out there" beyond the box they live in?

I am not naive and uninformed as to the discouragement and mind-numbing ludicrousness of the problems they face.  However, I am staunchly opposed to their acceptance of our school system condition.  If we don't start to move these boulders forward one rock at a time we will never get anywhere... which is where we seem to be getting when compared to the rest of the world.

Inertia keeps us from moving forward.  "A body at rest tends to stay at rest."  We need to move these boulders.  We need to move these mountains.  And anyone who isn't pitching in to help is standing in the way.  I may not have anything more than a single shovel, but I am willing to blister my hands to move every boulder, rock, stone, and pebble.

If you have anything to do with the school systems in our great nation, you have a choice to make.  Are you going to help or are you going to stand around?

If you care for our students... even slightly... I say, "DON'T be discouraged by the enormity of the task!  Become a leader who inspires one more person by stepping up.  Step forward.  Grab a shovel, and be someone others can see working toward a better future."