This week I’m in Austin attending a professional gathering for senior cabinet members and district administrators from across the country discussing innovation in teaching and learning and how to maximize current technologies and funding to advance student achievement. It’s an intimate event with only 100 attendees and I was invited to present on effective strategies for organizational improvement. Admittedly, discussions around accountability, performance excellence, and key performance indicators aren’t always met with wide appeal. In public education, a structure inherently designed to promote social good, outcome-based dialogue can vary dramatically and consensus on defining success is often difficult. Teaching is one of those few professions in which all members of a given population have probably had a direct relationship with, in one setting or another. And when people talk about the work of schools, they generally do so through some shared experience. My presentation topic doesn’t lay out how we should define success for our schools but rather offers a framework that can be tailored to systems of all size. For me, these ideas have been shaped by more than 15 years leading this work, including time in one school district that was the recipient of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the nation’s only presidential award for performance excellence and innovation. Named in honor of the 26th U.S. Secretary of Commerce, Baldrige is quoted as saying, “Success is finding something you really like to do and caring enough about it to do it well.”
The NBA playoffs began earlier this month and I remembered a slogan the league once had – Where Amazing Happens. For two all-time basketball greats, their final career games took place on April 10th when the regular season ended. Dirk Nowitski and Dwayne Wade are two modern-day athletes that transcend the world of sports and have been community stalworths for social good. For Dwayne Wade in particular, he knew as he began his sixteenth season it would be his last. And as part of his farewell tour he began swapping jerseys with opposing players he had a connection with, through friendship, greatness, respect, and beyond.
In the end, he had exchanged over 40 jerseys but the last five brought the future hall of famer full circle. In a surprise tribute to Wade, five people took turns thanking him for his role off the court: a woman who Wade took shopping when her house burned down around Christmas; a woman who got to go to college because Wade paid her tuition; a troubled young man who turned his life around with Wade’s guidance; a sister of a student killed in last year’s Parkland school shooting; and finally, Wade’s own mother provides the ultimate show-stopper testimony. This four-minute video reminds us that some of Wade’s most memorable impacts are the ones he played in the lives of others. Sometimes you have to reframe the optics to see success. Even harder, you may have to be patient and let success present itself to you. In the end, I’d like to think amazing can happen anywhere.
What if? Why Not? 
Hang on long enough and Amazing will happen!
20-ish years ago I had a young lady in the 3rd grade class I was teaching at Slaughter Elem. She wasn’t GT or SpEd and she sometimes struggled with math. She loved to read and write and talk about her reading and writing. In general, she was just an all-around great kid and I just really liked her. I think we would have been BFF’s if I had been a student in my own class. She was quiet and contemplative when it was necessary and then a boisterous “Spice Girl” when she was with her closest friends. She kept her cards close to her vest and I really loved that about her; she valued honorable relationships at age 9.
After our year in 3rd grade I got reassigned to fourth grade and my principal told me I could “take” 3 of my 3rd grade students with me to fourth grade. She was one of “the chosen” who I picked to come along with me. She thrived in 4th grade and even got over her fear of math. She continued to excel with reading and writing and she was reflective beyond her years about both. She moved on to 5th grade and then to middle and high school, and I lost track of her…Until I saw her name on the program for the MISD New Teacher Breakfast a few years ago. This little spitfire, Spice Girl who loved to read and write was going to be a teacher in the same district where I met her. I could not have been prouder in my life.
Today this same spitfire interviewed for an MRS position in the district. She has a married name now and a child to boot. As education professionals we talk all the time about the difference teachers make in their students’ lives…but there is a flip side to that. Sometimes those little faces in our class make a difference in our own lives when we least expect it; and in those instances, we are the lucky ones…with or without a t-shirt.
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