TOMMIE SAYLOR: Longing for the Booyah Society

“I understand that I’m not perfect. I made mistakes and I had a hand in everything that’s happened to me, good and bad.”

-- NBA superstar Dwyane Wade

By Tommie Saylor

Kennedy High School Principal

We live in a “gotcha” society. We love to find, catch, discover, uncover, hear about, talk about and witness someone doing something wrong. We seem stuck on the negative. We seem to like bringing down people who have found success by digging into their lives until we find something that can be exploited.

Once found, we feel empowered to air out the “dirty laundry.” For our own amusement and feeling of superiority, we destroy someone else’s life due to a moment of weakness, a single bad decision or from an act that was committed in haste and without proper thought.

Never mind that the individual may have spent years serving others. The only thing that seems to matter in our modern society is the one bad thing that may or may not have occurred.

We are all human and we are not perfect. So why do we expect our leaders, those in authority, our neighbors and those who have found success to be perfect? Can any of us stand up to our own scrutiny that we measure others against?

Have we not all done things in our past that we are not proud of? Are we not all sinners? As I have said over and over again, if we want people to forgive us when we make a mistake, then we need to learn to forgive others when they do the same. You can’t expect forgiveness from others, if you are not willing to give forgiveness to others.

Imagine what our society would be like if we put as much effort into catching people doing things right, as we do into catching people doing things wrong. If we lived in a society of “booyah.”

If, when mistakes are made, we keep it private, fix the problem, learn from our mistakes and move on. Imagine if the prevailing topics were about how others have found success, how if we work hard and do as much good as possible we too could someday move up the “ladder of success.”

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we should ignore incompetence. I’m saying that we should not celebrate the discovery of incompetence as if we found a “golden ticket” to Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Instead we should deal with the incompetence privately, while publically and cooperatively rejoicing in the success of others.

In today’s society when no one talks to you, then it is assumed that all things are going well. Silence somehow means success. If you are called to the office, you become instantly nervous.

Think about how awesome it would be if it was the opposite? If supervisors called people to the office to tell them how much they are appreciated, to tell them about all the good things they have seen them do, about how valuable they are to the organization. In a society of “booyah,” incompetence would receive the silent treatment. Success would be exuberantly and publically celebrated.

Then again, we control the climate and culture within our own buildings. We are the ones that can set the tone and decide what kind of society exists within our classrooms. We get to decide what kind of environment in which we wish to work and our students get to learn.

Let’s choose wisely.

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