"Normal"

In the days before selfies and cell phones, long before the Internet connected us all, students and parents still sought to live normal lives as normal people. When you glimpse back through time, whether it's The Glass Menagerie, Sixteen Candles, Can't Hardly Wait, or Notting Hill one discovers that "Normal" is just an illusion. As parents, teachers, students, and community members, we look at the past and dream wistfully of easier times. Times which seemed to be more patterned, more relaxed, and more normal. We assume its because of "parents today," "kids today," or "technology" that our world is more of a struggle, more complex, or more challenging. We point to entitlement and arrogance of others and yet we aren't ready to accept that there are consistently challenges, crises of identity, and eventually overcoming the barrier.

No Child Left Behind put us all on the "Lake Wobegon"path. We worked as schools, families, and society to become a place where as Garrison Keillor said,"all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."  Legislation that forced us forward to the illusion that all children could be above grade level. A number calculated as the mean of that same population. Through this legislation, states, districts, and schools, began a race towards ratcheting up expectations, policies that identified children as failures, promoted retention practices even though the research clearly identifies the correlation between retention and dropping out of schools, and penalized almost everyone involved. The epitome of this will be the PARCC results when released this December will indicate less than 40% of students meet or exceed state expectations. In the quest to be normal or above average, we have become failures.

The reality is, no one ever leads the normal life. We all have stuff. Things that get in our way. We discover money doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask a professional athlete. It helps, but it doesn't solve them. Fame doesn't solve all of our problems, just ask an actor or actress. It gives you resources, but also challenges. The reality is, each of us has challenges. Each of our children have their own set of gifts and own set of problems. As a principal, I would often say to my students and their families, know what is on the back of your baseball card. Be open and willing to see those statistics, the strengths and the challenges. Be honest with yourself about what each of those are and use them to your advantage. 

When we look inside The Glass Menagerie, we discover a family that looks perfect on the outside has it's own demons on the inside. In Sixteen Candles, Samantha (Meg Ryan) and Robin (Jami Gertz) stare at Caroline, the senior with the perfect body and the perfect boyfriend, only to discover as the night goes on that Caroline's world is falling apart just like everyone else. In Can't Hardly Wait, Preston (Ethan Embry) longs for Amanda Beckett (Jennifer Love Hewitt) but discovers that her life is just as problematic as his.  No one has a normal life. No one has it perfect. No one has it easy. We are all working on something different. It's easy to look in from the outside and ask why is that person's life so easy or that person's child so successful. We've all got stuff and we are all making it one day at a time.

Just Saying No

Bad Decision

Eye of the Beholder

So much of what we see is what we anticipate seeing. As I talked with a former high school principal yesterday, he shared a story of when the school decided to allow students to use their cell phones in the hallways between classes. Initially, in anticipation of the rule change, parents and teachers expressed significant concern that the students would be texting throughout the hallways and no longer socializing with other students. Upon implementation, the adults in the building discovered that actually the students did very little texting in the hallways and when they did it was often with their parents. Why? Simply because their friends were with them at school. The students shared funny videos and memes with each other but the device wasn't the center of their universe but rather their personal social network was. Convincing parents that this was the reality, a harder job than to facilitate the implementation of the rule change.

Often what we look for is what we expect to see. At kindergarten orientation, the teachers asked my son to draw a picture of himself. Rather than trying he replied to the staff that he couldn't do it. Between not drawing the picture and not sitting for the big book story, the staff assumed that he was delayed and expressed their concern to us. When we asked if they investigated his ability to read or do mathematics, they replied that most kindergartners don't read. Their expectations, like many of ours, are impacted by what we expect to see and what we want to see. As is often the case, this limits our perceptions of what can be. Do we see who the child is and what they can be or do we see their present behavior and academic performance?

In Sunday School, our team allows fifth grade students to bring their own devices as part of the learning. Parents worry that it will be a case of the haves and the have nots. Some children operating with tools and others unable to. Some showing off their latest wares and some jealous. I'm sure their are some children jealous of others. They are also jealous of the name brand clothes others wear or the vacations that other families take. It is a situation we need to council children through, not one exacerbated by the presence of digital devices. Other families worry that all the children will do is play games or text their friends. I am sure at points our children do both. However, in addition to that, they collaborate on a great many things. The students read stories from Genesis and Exodus. They have found preferred sources of information. For some it is our text book. For others, aish.com a simpler read. And for some, the Jewish Virtual Library, a more complex reading of the text. Students also make unique products. Students have recorded their own movies and plays. Composed their own songs which they have recorded and built choose your own adventure games using Minecraft. If we create constraints by our own vision of what is their we reduce children's ability to innovate powerful products.

So often what we see is what we expect to see. When we open our eyes up to the possibility of new products, ideas, or innovations, we see a world of potential. It is difficult to acknowledge our assumptions and clear them for new opportunities. However, it is a journey worth doing. We live in an amazing world of insight and experience. It is up to us to open up our eyes and see it.

The Carpenter's Cup

Holding Out For A Hero

As Halloween passed, I was struck by the large number of Kylo Ren and Stormtrooper costumes I saw wandering the streets and up to our door. It was an interesting realization to see so many more Stormtroopers and Sith than Jedis. My mind wanders to nearly thirty years ago. Would we have seen so many villains running the streets? I went to Costco and discovered that one could purchase the lightsaber for Kylo Ren, but not a Jedi lightsaber. We could get a Sith sleeping bag but not a Jedi one. At first I wondered if people had simply purchased all the protagonist materials, but the displays are new. It makes me wonder.

Over time we have embraced the flawed protagonist. Heroes are no longer as naive as Luke Skywalker or as virtuous as Ren McCormack. They have become more complicated. Iron Man Tony Stark is known as widely for his brilliant mind and inventiveness as his penchant to make mistakes. When Captain America calls Iron Man out for "Language" he realizes he will be made fun of. We have begun to accept the flawed protagonist, but have our protagonists become so flawed that our children no longer see or prefer the side of good to the side of mayhem.

Clearly the marketing for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is focused on the Sith. The children are gravitating not to Han and Leia, but to those who I assume are the antagonists. In fact, we don't even know all the names of the protagonists. While it does build mystery and suspense, I wonder after they see the movie, will the children still be drawn to the Sith. In our act of creating depth, have we made the dark side more attractive?

"A Jedi's strength flows from the Force. But beware of the dark side. Anger, fear, aggression; the dark side of the Force are they. Easily they flow, quick to join you in a fight. If once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will, as it did Obi-Wan's apprentice." - Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

The world is a changing place. Sometimes what you think is right is wrong. Sometimes people you think are wrong are right. At times the lines between good and evil, bad and good, are blurred. Perhaps in time, we will find that these are not all that different. If Johnny Lawrence can be the true Karate Kid, anything is possible. However, I hope my boys grow up to be Jedi because the Sith scare me..

Holding Out For A Hero