“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.
