Panther Country

I just returned from the AASCA soccer tournament in Panama. The host schools, International School of Panama (ISP) and Balboa Academy, rolled out the red carpet for us and all the competing “small” schools in Central America. They hosted a flawless event. The organization was well-thought out, the support staff was everywhere and always willing to help, the transportation was on time and accommodating, the referees withstood the heat of the Panamanian sun and the passions of players and coaches, and the parents sold the kind of food that student athletes love to fuel up on. The smell of barbecued meats wafted through the playing areas when the occasional breeze decided a break was needed from the wilting heat. The water was icy cold and plentiful, and we left the pitch with one team proclaimed champion and the other runner-up. It was a successful tournament from the point of view of the host schools, and it was a successful tournament from the vantage point of this principal and number one fan of CDS. Go Panthers.

In reflecting on our trip I thought a lot about our successes, our challenges, and our representation at an International event. One type of success has to do with competition. Both our boys team and our girls team were successful because they competed to the best of their abilities. The evidence was in the cuts, scrapes, bumps, bruises, injuries, soreness, fatigue, sweat, and tears. Not one athlete walked away from any match unchanged. Everyone felt drained either physically, emotionally or both. I remembered the words of my favorite coach who always said, if you train hard, give every practice your best effort, prepare yourself to the best of your ability, and then compete to the best of your ability, you will get what you deserve. He never said we would win, we would be the champs, only that we would get what we deserved.

After many years of contemplation and reflection I totally understand what coach meant, but when I say to other people they are sometimes confused. After a painful loss to a bitter arch-rival, I was feeling particularly angry at my teammates and the referees and at my coach for saying we “deserved” to lose. He didn’t actually say we “deserved” to lose, but look at his statement. We had trained hard, we played to the best of our ability, and yet we lost the game. But coach was right; we got what we deserved. We were rewarded with a high level of skilled play that resulted in great athletic accomplishment and achievement. No, we did not win the match, but the other team had trained equally hard and gave it their all and they were equally rewarded. There are many things that happen in games that players cannot control. What they can control are their own actions, attitudes, and efforts. They can give up or get discouraged when a referee makes an incorrect decision or call, when the ball bounces a funny way or when the less than perfect playing field throws some object in their way rather than at the other team.  We take control of our preparation, our training, and our efforts and we take advantage of our opportunities. The results–the win or the loss–is what it is, but if we take care of what we can control, we will get what we deserve.

Only our student athletes know if they truly got what they deserved. Only they know if they trained properly, worked hard, and gave their best effort. It appeared to this observer that they did, and the fact that they left Panama with many good memories and a couple of trophies suggested that everyone did his or her best. The biggest challenge that I see for high school athletes is that of balance. How do you train sufficiently, prepare for high-level competition, and pursue your scholastic and academic goals a the same time. The professional athletes who are often their heroes, train exclusively for their sport. But high school athletes often find themselves also competing for grades, for academic recognition, for awards and honors that will then translate into acceptances at the selective colleges and universities. It is an unfortunate comparison because the two worlds (athletic and scholastic) often have different rules and actually work in very different ways. So even though we say the lessons learned on the field translate in the classroom, that is only true in certain circumstances.

The differences are subtle but very real in my mind. I think that academics lags behind athletics in many ways. I can coach an athlete to do his best, and if he is not the champion in the end, he can walk away feeling proud at his effort and accomplishment. But I’m not sure we have convinced students that learning, in and of itself, is a worthwhile pursuit. I’m not sure a student sees much benefit in working hard at school if it doesn’t mean acceptance into a top tier college and the eventual reward of a well-paid job. I know there are some athletes who only want wins and championships. But there are numerous statistics that support the notion that winning is not, as they say, everything. In many parent meetings before the start of the season I used to present handouts to the parents with data that listed the top 15 reasons high school kids competed in sports: winning or championships was never in the top 5.

So what poisons academics for kids? I think it is grades. I think we emphasize the equivalent of winning at so many levels that kids are always feeling that they are in competition and that the only goal is to win. Win the A, win the participation points, ace the test, win the gold star, win the teacher’s approval, and so on.

All of my career I have been a coach and a teacher and I have always compared my teaching to coaching and my coaching to teaching. I have tried, as a teacher, not to use grades as the incentive, but I have never devalued their importance because it is the only system kids know. It is not a system that is going to go away, so it is unfair for me, as the adult, to say “grades don’t matter.” Kids know better. They do matter, and so I respect that.

It was nice for the boys to win that soccer championship. Glenda Pearson, who has been at CDS for a long time, told me that the boys had never won a soccer championship in her tenure at CDS. You cannot tell me that kids would continue to play soccer if it was only about the championship. But how many kids would still be studying at CDS if we never gave out any A’s?

Finally, I feel incredibly lucky to have participated in an international event. In the past, as a coach, I have participated in state championships. We have held tournaments or participated in tournaments with schools from other states. I am not sure if our kids truly understand the uniqueness of an international sporting event. It is certainly a matter of great pride to represent one’s school, or even one’s city or state at a competition in the United States, but rarely does a student get to represent his country. Our athletes do it three times a year at AASCA. They represent not just CDS but Costa Rica. And not all of our athletes are Costa Rican. We have Canadians, Hondurans, Dutch, US and others competing for a Costa Rican team. And when we won, songs of victory were intermingled with songs about victorious “Ticos.”

I am an often a quiet spectator and observer at these events which leads others to question whether I am enjoying myself. I had a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. I loved every moment of it. But it takes a lot of time and energy for me to observe and absorb, so I apologize if I seemed too quiet or introspective. But I was mostly proud of our kids. Not for winning–though that was special in its own way–but for the way the teams behaved, represented their school and represented their “country.”

Cliches exist because they once accurately described a situation but wore out through repeated use. March is the month that comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb. The metaphor may have originally meant to describe the weather, but regardless of the changes in temperature over the years, I never recall gliding serenely into the month of March. March comes in like a lion because February is the busiest month of the year. The winter holiday begins in December, drifts into January, and gradually–after all the resolutions and posturings–the year begins. We stop forgetting that it is 10 and not 09 anymore as we fill out forms or write checks (do people still have checkbooks and write checks?). The real business of my world shifts into overdrive during February.

For me, the first week in February is when I got married and little did I know when I married that I was setting a trap for myself. My wife and I were both professors at the University of Hawaii at the time–where we had met–and as we talked about the logistics of deciding where in the states we would marry: she was from Texas, I was from Michigan; she had family in Washington, DC, I had family in Ohio; no decision was made. Instead, one Saturday morning, we made our way down to the courthouse with a couple of friends from the University, quietly said our vows in front of the judge, returned to our apartment and called our families to tell them the news.

We celebrated our first anniversary worrying whether or not we could find day care for our first child, due to come into the world in one month.  One year later we would celebrate our last anniversary together where it was the most important event of the week. Three months later I accepted a job at Punahou School, and from then on our anniversary always took back seat to some other major event. Punahou Carnival, one of the biggest fundraisers and all-consuming events I have ever been a part of, was always the first weekend in February.  No matter how important our anniversary was to us, we suddenly found ourselves caught up in an event that became–as it was for thousands of others–one of the biggest celebrations of the year. It was clearly an event far surpassing our anniversary and as members of this community we embraced it as did everyone connected to the Punahou family.

Suffice to say that even after we left Punahou our anniversary has had to compete with teacher recruitment (starts the first week in February) and the Super Bowl (recently, the first Sunday in February).  But those events are only the beginning for this busiest of months.  Every year at least two major AASCA events seem to be scheduled each February; the Fun Run is in February; and at least one outdoor education trip was in February, and the list goes on.

For me, the metaphor of March Madness, a metaphoric description of the frenetic energy associated with college basketball and the NCAA tournament reminds us that the cliches of March seem to have something in common, and it has little to do with weather or basketball. For me, March is the month of metaphoric violence, so madness has always seemed an apt descriptor to me.  The last violent storms of the year whip up at the end of February almost as if Nature is trying to remind us to be grateful for spring. No matter where spring falls on the calendar, March is its violent predecesor. The thaws begin, the floods, the winds, the rains. The ugly dirty snows of the cities, the white and aesthetically picturesque snows of the country fade from sight. The limbs that have survived sprout buds like adolescent faces sporting pimples. As we are reminded from our own experiences of bringing children in to the world, birth–the central motif of spring–is the most violent albeit miraculous event of the spring.

Fortunately we do not live day to day in the metaphoric world of March. Instead, the days of March and its attending madness will bring us the following: a visit from our new director, Mr. Greg MacGilpin, and his family (March 3-5); a professional development half day (March 3); the soccer championships (AASCA soccer, boys and girls, March 10-14 in Panama);  the MS Choir Festival (March 17-21 at CDS); and the end of the third quarter (March 26). There will also be two college fairs, one for Canadian colleges and one for Catholic colleges; as well as a college night for juniors.

Although I don’t quite know what to do with the lamb metaphor and how all this wraps up and heads into April, I do hope we can all cope with the changes that March brings and that we find in April some solace. Let’s hope it is not, “the cruelest month” as T.S. Eliot has described it. Let’s hope it is the most restful month.

Point of view is one of the most interesting aspects of critical thinking to me. The ability to look at something or some situation through the eyes of someone else is not an easy thing to do. Simply being able to step away from a situation and look at it through a different lens is essential in good decision making, yet how rarely do we take the time to do so, getting wrapped up and fixated on our own beliefs.

Point of view is also interesting when we reflect on our own experiences. I look back on the journey I have taken and realize there are many ways to interpret where I’ve been, the decisions I’ve made, and how I have arrived where I am. For example, I have always thought of myself as someone who makes a lot of metaphorical wrong turns. I am notorious in real life for getting lost. I have come to accept the fact that no matter how hard I try to orient myself to my surroundings I will always make at least one wrong turn. My wife says I’m getting better, but the amount of effort I must put in to such a mundane activity often wears me out. Nevertheless, I have given a lot of thought to this convergence of metaphor and reality and I have tried to reconcile and understand this curious phenomenon about my life.

Here is what I have concluded.  I have been been…metaphorically speaking…lost. Now before you shudder or tsk tsk or shake your head, remember that this is a piece about point of view, and I’m not lost in the sense of despairing and unable to reach my goal. I think of my being lost more this way: the end of the journey is the same for all of us, and each of us arrives at that destination in different ways. I will get there, same as everyone, but it won’t be the easiest, most traditional, or even the best way of arriving, if there is such a thing.

Ok, that’s broad and general enough to make everyone feel good, so let me clarify, refine, and elaborate: the various paths through life are not exactly prescribed, but most people assume that there are tried and true paths, the traditional roads to the end, and most of us are directed, prodded, and pushed along those particular paths.  Some of us have more signposts pointing in the “right” direction than others: parents, teachers, counselors, elders, relatives, etc. Many of them have trudged the path, they know the way, and they encourage that we not stray or deviate down unknown roads.

You probably think I’m now going to tell you “I have taken the road less traveled and that has made all the difference.” Not exactly. I think, instead, that I have taken many roads less traveled by mistake. I don’t regret those turns, and I’m actually pretty sure that what was once accidental in my life has now become a pattern of almost deliberate and intentional “lostness.” I haven’t quite developed an instinct as most do for the right road, but at this point in my life I am pretty sure that I am deliberately choosing the wrong paths, but I’m ok with that. I’m not an adventure seeker or an iconoclast who has to do it his own way. I’m just very suspicious and not convinced that the path others have taken is always the path I want to be on. That may sound iconoclastic and individual, but it comes with a lot of hand-wringing and self doubt–not exactly the traits of a trail-blazer.

This past Saturday my mom’s sister and roommate died. I was closer to my aunt than to my own mother because she was one of those signposts in my life. My parents were not very good at pointing the way in life. They were not even very good role models, but they were the only parents I had. So many of the choices and decisions I made growing up were mostly guesses, based on the logic and reasoning of a fairly solitary adolescent mind, and often they were not the same choices and decisions my friends were making. I had a lot of “bad ” friends growing up in the city of Detroit, so my going my own way kept me out of trouble. But I also didn’t trust the decisions my “good” friends made because they didn’t seem right for me. I would choose a path, realize it was “different,” experience a brief moment of self-loathing and regret, and then gradually embrace the decision and see what the path had to offer.

My aunt wanted desperately for me to be rich and successful. Although not Jewish herself, she married a Jewish man and became a stereotypical Jewish mother to her only son, my cousin, and to me, her quasi-adopted son. My cousin went through normal rebellions but eventually ended up on the right path, whereas I was deliberately seeking out my aunt’s advice and then deliberately choosing a different way. I loved my aunt dearly and she provided everything I felt my own parents were supposed to give but couldn’t. Yet, some strange urge or desire prompted me in different directions. Despite the disappointments, she never stopped loving me and she never hesitated to show me the right path to take.

My point of view tells me I have something of the contrarian deeply embedded in my soul. My mother’s point of view is that I’m stubborn and enjoy being different just to make people mad. My aunt’s point of view was that I had some passion she couldn’t identify or understand and it was her job to try to protect me from it because it would just lead to unhappiness. Well, rest in peace Aunt Elsie and please understand that I am still wandering, still taking the wrong paths, and still enjoying every minute of the journey. It’s different but it’s not bad and it doesn’t lead to unhappiness. It really is ok, but thank you for always pointing the way.

Many seniors have asked me, how do I say thank you to my teachers who have given so much to me, including letters of recommendation that got me into college? A bottle of wine? A box of candy? Some cookies and a handwritten note?

My answer is: none of the above.

I do know what your teachers want, so in that sense I have the perfect thank you gift. Respect. Requires no money, no gift wrapping, no baking, and you don’t even have to write a note. All you have to do is keep one little thing in mind: I am not the only person in the school, in my class, or in this room who matters. I may have been accepted to college and no longer care about getting an A or a B or even a C. Heck, all I want to do is pass and get out of here.  OK, so that’s your situation. But some of your classmates do care, and they still want a good grade, they still want to get into college, and heck, some of them still want to learn. Your indifference leads to distracting behaviors in class, which prevents your classmates from learning and is disrespectful to them. But most importantly, it is disrespectful to the people every year, senior class after senior class, who never give up second semester:  your teachers. Day in and day out they prepare lessons, strive to educate you, write letters on your behalf—and more letters when you don’t quite make the college of your choice. They bend over backward for you and they really care about you.

And all they want in return is your respect so they can teach. They don’t need you to feign interest, to praise them, or even to do all your homework, though that would be nice. They just want an atmosphere of tolerance and respect so they can do what they do best, and so that those who do want to benefit have the opportunity to do so.

In other words, the best way to show your respect is not to let your indifference, your lack of enthusiasm, your boredom show. It is really ok to have those feelings, but your teachers are working really hard under a different set of assumptions. Other unacceptable behaviors are more tolerable: don’t do all the homework, turn in mediocre work; however, don’t ruin the classroom experience for your friends or for your teachers. You have free periods, you have breaks, you have lunch, you have after school, and you have weekends to socialize and ignore school. For a few hours each day we simply ask that you continue to show respect for the ones who have partnered with you, every step of the way, on your road to learning and college. It has the double advantage of being respectful to your classmates who do want to continue learning. So keep it simple: no sleeping, no gossiping, no distracting behaviors. Just sit quietly, do what you are asked to do, and the time will pass.

Believe it or not, you did not invent senioritis or the senior slump. It happens every year to lots of kids. But it doesn’t happen to everyone and it almost never happens to teachers. So, this is not a criticism or an insult to you: we know how you are feeling and we understand that for many of you, the push is over. But common decency and respect simply asks for some cooperation and a polite nod and wink so that we can all finish the year as the friends we have worked hard to become.

This is the best way I can think of to show your gratitude.