America's Got Talent

Exxon Knows Teachers

I’ll bet you’ve seen the Exxon Mobil commercials that are about teachers.  On standardized math and science tests, according to the commercials, students in the US are faring poorly against those from other countries.  In the New York television market, I saw the spot at least a dozen times in November and December.

Pretty amazing, really:  good advertising IS education. 

By almost any measure, American public schooling is in trouble.

We need better teachers—almost everyone agrees on this point.  How to get and keep great teachers, however, remains a sticky wicket.  And—it’s the single most important problem plaguing education.

Exxon’s point appears to be that we need better training for teachers.  Apparently, they've put some money into doing it, too, which is commendable, even if you're not crazy about that company.  Again, a lot of people seem to agree about that—I certainly do.  I have a lot of experience in teacher training:  I've been through graduate programs, seminars, professional development, staff meetings... I've seen what people in my profession are doing to train us.  It is not good.  I hate to say it but, if you're a teacher reading my blog, you know what I'm saying.  Every once in a while, you actually learn something in PD.  But most of the time, it is dismal parody of itself.  It's bad teaching about good teaching.  It'd be funny it weren't so bloody sad or frustrating.

The Billion Dollar Question

How do you train a teacher into being a great teacher?

My answer is simple:  you can’t, basically.  Or, at least, it takes a really motivated person to do it.  I talk about it in detail in an earlier article "The Great Ones" which you should read right now.  Go ahead, I'll wait here.

You can help a lousy teacher become less lousy. With a lot of work, you can take a decent teacher and make them better, certainly.  But you can’t-- without an incredible amount of work in a culture that is really hard to build-- make any old person a great teacher.   It’s like thinking you can take the bassist of any band and make him into Paul McCartney.  Or taking a decent pitcher from a team in the majors and make him into Babe Ruth.  It's incredibly difficult to make someone great at anything. 

So where are all of the great teachers?  Some of them are in the classrooms.  But I’m willing to bet there are many, many more who aren’t teachers by trade.  They’re making money doing something else.

The bottom line:  we don’t have a skill problem.  We have a talent problem.  Exxon Mobil, I'm glad you want to help out teachers.  You guys over at your company know how to attract talent, right?  I'm not trying to be cute or anything, but it's not complicated.  

Mostly, it's just expensive.  

The Sound of Music

My director's notes for the program.

Come see The Sound of Music 

on 23-24 March at North Shore High School, Glen Head, NY.

Life is a movie too…Starring you,

your whole family is the cast and crew...that's a little secret between God and you

        - Stew, from the musical Passing Strange

A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer; it sings because it has a song.

        - Lou Holtz, professional football coach

...there ain't no other way, baby: I was born this way

        - Lady Gaga

No one gets to pick where she is born, to what family, how tall or talented or unlucky he will be. What each of us does with this becomes the drama of our lives. It’s a long series of trials, adventures, risks, and dangers as we try to figure out who we are.

Your life is the story of what you were born to do.

When we meet Maria, our beloved heroine in The Sound of Music, she's totally lost. She's preparing to be a nun, but it feels like a bad fit. She loves the nuns and the convent, but she feels incomplete and alone.  Only when she sings on the mountain does she feel like she belongs. “I go to the hills when my heart feels lonely... [and they] fill my heart with the sound of music...” Maria uses her beloved music to turn away from confronting her fears.

Maria, fortunately, isn't allowed to hide. Her mentor, Mother Abbess, pushes Maria from the stability of the convent and into the world. Maria needs to find her place in the world.  Mother Abbess knows that the most powerful enemy in the world is not the Nazis. It's the unwillingness to take important risks. She knows that we must be willing to face the fear of failure with the unending hope of finding ourselves.

Our production of The Sound of Music has a cast and crew filled with searchers. Not all of them are great test takers. They don't all do well sitting in desks all day. Some of them will probably not finish college. But these young people have a lot to give. Some are great musicians. Others can operate a professional lighting board. They can anticipate safety hazards in the dark and look out for each other. They can build a dress. They can use their voices to transport you from your long week to the mountains of Austria, take a text and turn it into something inspiring and beautiful.

Just as it takes a brave mentor like Mother Abbess to imagine what a lost child needs, it takes a brave community to imagine what a generation of children needs. North Shore is facing some tough challenges these days. In business, government, and our homes, the mountains look pretty daunting.  Can we afford to hide?

We dedicate this show to the many kids in our schools who are listening to the sound of their own music:  musicians, dancers, actors, builders, stagehands, seam rippers, runners, point guards, trainers, fullbacks, short stops, painters, chefs, mechanics, designers, electricians, pitchers, goalies, robot builders, poets... all of them. Because these kids were born this way.

Welcome to the third and final piece of 2011-2012, our Season of Change.