“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....
