TOMMIE SAYLOR: The strength of each member equals the team

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.”

-- Phil Jackson, famous NBA basketball coach

By Tommie Saylor

Kennedy High School Principal

I don’t know if it was because I was trusting and naïve or just young and dumb, but I can clearly remember sitting in the middle of the living room looking across the coffee table at my older sister. I wasn’t even 5 years old.

You see, my older sister and I had a deal. I would trade her all my dimes for her nickels. So every now and then I would get my piggy bank and meet my sister at the coffee table where I would pull the plug on the bottom spilling the condense all over the table top.

Being the helpful older sister, she would assist me in separating my change that I would earn from doing chores around the house into two piles – just dimes, and those not dimes. With the dime pile, together we would count them out and I would hand them over to my older sister where she would give me an equal number of nickels. According to my older sister, nickels are bigger than dimes so therefore they were better. Being the benevolent older sister, she was just trying to help me out.

Likewise, a few years later after I figured out her dimes-for-nickels scam, and given her eagerness to make amends for her fiscal transgressions, my older sister was happy to be “in charge” of equally dividing the candy bar. When I was young my parents would take us with them on their weekly trip to the grocery store, and if we were good, they would buy us a candy bar that we could share.

With this, and being very careful not to get “ripped off” again by my older and more experienced sibling, I insisted that we split the candy bar immediately upon receipt. So there I was, sitting in the back seat of my parents car with my humble older sister on our way home from the store, when we would receive the candy bar well earned by our angelic behavior.

My sister would immediately take charge, and under my close scrutiny, unwrap our treasure and split the candy bar as evenly as possible, yet never quite achieving a perfect split. But fear not, my sister had a plan, she would simply bite off and consume the extra portion on the longer piece squaring up and evening out the two portions of the candy bar, and hold the two equal sections up before me so that I could indeed inspect and approve the equal split.

From here I would receive one piece and she would get the other.

Over time her accuracy in evenly splitting the candy bar became less and less proficient, and the two portions after evening out the split became smaller and smaller. I honestly believed her when she explained that my parents were just buying us smaller candy bars.

When this kind of thing happens between kids. It is funny, comical. We all get a good laugh.

But when this kind of thing happens between adults, it is tragic in the worst way. When one adult, or unit of adults, tries to better improve their position by “stepping on” another, then humanity suffers, and in the end there are no winners.

It seems that when life gets hard, when difficult decisions need to be made, we often forget that we are a team. Though self-sacrifice for the betterment of the team is a praise-worthy endeavor, as is placing the needs of the team before one’s own needs, when the team “feeds” upon its own members, then the team has paved the way for its own demise.

Simply, what happens to one is felt by all.

We must remember and always keep in mind. All of us who make up the Taylor School District are on the same team. Never should we air our dirty laundry before the public, for doing so harms us all, like an infection it spreads toxic residue among the very people we have sworn to serve.

Simply, no matter how difficult things become, no matter what the problems are, if ever asked by the public how things are going my answer, our answer, should always be the same: Great. Things are just fine.

I’m not advocating that we lie to the public, but I am saying that we all need to follow my mother’s advice she gave me when I was a young man: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then say nothing at all.”

If not, we will definitely fall into the trap my father warned me about. “It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear to be a fool, than open your mouth and remove all doubt.”

In public education the formula is simple. If you lose the public’s trust, they take their children to a different school. And we are all looking for employment elsewhere.

What starts here, changes the world. Making Kennedy the school of choice. Excellence by design....