Relationships Matter

I recently returned from a trip to Chicago where I attended the largest convening of Hope Street Group state teacher fellows ever assembled. Teachers from Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Hawaii all assembled for two days so that we could share ideas on how to better collect and disseminate teacher voice in our respective states. Other than spending a couple of days with some of the most energizing solutions-oriented teachers in the country, one of the highlights of my trip was listening to our keynote speaker, Allan Blue.

Mr. Blue has a strong liberal arts background and majored in English and theater when he was in college. After teaching both of these subjects at the high school and community college levels for a number of years, he landed a job in the technology field quite by accident. A friend of his offered him a job as the creative director of a brand-new website called relationships.com. Haven't heard of it? That's okay, because neither has anyone else. It was a big flop. However, that experience led to his position of co-founding PayPal and, eventually, LinkedIn.

When asked about his advice for high school seniors, Blue suggested that they get work-like experience--meaning either job experience or volunteer work. He also advised that seniors should focus on how they can help others without expecting anything in return. Having a genuine interest in the success of others not only improves the fabric of society, but it is also an excellent way to learn how to be successful yourself. His final piece of advice for them is to learn how the workplace functions. After all, in order to move up the career ladder and experience the American Dream, it's crucial to see that the ladder exists, has rungs on it, and is waiting to be climbed.

Blue also discussed that what makes Silicon Valley successful is the underlying culture of innovation where people aren’t afraid to try new things and to fail. This is coupled with a constant blending of different companies, where people frequently leave one company to join another, share ideas with each other, and improve the newly-formed company. “Innovation happens,” he said, “when you put talent, opportunity, and a safe place to fail together.”

The fundamental theme of Allen Blue’s personal experiences and his advice to others is that relationships matter. He got his big break in the technology field because a friend observed his creativity and thought it could be channeled to help his internet business. As a result, Mr. Blue is now worth tens of millions of dollars.  His advice to high school seniors all centers around building relationships. Silicon Valley’s success is hinged upon people knowing and sharing ideas with each other with the common goal of continuous innovation.

The education field has much to learn from this. Teachers, school buildings, and even entire school systems notoriously function completely independent of each other. Case in point: Coffee County has three school districts and none of them collaborate with each other. They all share the common goal of educating the best that Coffee County has to offer; yet, the educators at each of these schools never share one in-service session and there’s no sharing of ideas, unless teachers reach out to each other on their own, which is a rare occurrence. The directors of these school systems have built relationships and are on friendly terms; it’s time for the same opportunity to be extended to teachers--at least, if Dr. McFall, Dr. Lawson, and Mr. Wilkerson are truly serious about providing the best opportunity for students to prosper. We are all part of Team Coffee County, and a lack of consolidation among the school systems should not prevent the unification of ideas and best practices.

The American Dream

As a young boy, I grew up during the heyday of professional wrestling organizations like the WWF (now WWE) and WCW. Hulk Hogan, with his blonde hair, yellow shirt and yellow tights, encouraged kids to say their prayers and eat their vitamins. He was a larger-than-life figure whose popularity at the time paralleled that of LeBron James today. I certainly admired the Hulkster and he remains one of my favorite wrestlers (despite recent despicable newsworthy incidents), but he isn’t my all-time favorite. That distinction belongs to the late “American Dream” Dusty Rhodes.

At six foot two and weighing a little over 300 pounds, he was much larger than the average American and he had quite the atypical wrestler physique. The son of a plumber, he initially wanted to be a professional football player, and only tried out to be a professional wrestler after seeing an advertisement in a local newspaper. What he lacked in wrestling ability, he compensated for with his charisma, which he had in spades. Rhodes learned the ropes of professional wrestling so well that he literally put both the WWF and WCW on the map through his endless promoting and inventive gimmick matches. In the process, he niched out a forty year career and made himself, and his family, quite a bit of money. Dusty Rhodes was a self-made man and lived up to the title of “The American Dream.”

As my 11th grade students begin their journey through American literature, I thought it relevant to ask them how they would define the American Dream and if it’s in trouble. All of my classes independently cited one common trait as the most important component of the American Dream--opportunity. My classes were mixed, however, in whether the American Dream is alive and well today.

Perhaps Marianne Cooper is correct in her October article “The Downsizing of the American Dream” in The Atlantic, where she asserts that the American Dream isn’t dead; it’s just different. Americans still believe that hard work leads to success, but instead of buying a new home and starting a family, they are more concerned with holding on to the assets they already have. America’s desire to be debt-free is more important than moving up the financial ladder. This sentiment was echoed by my students, many of whom defined the American Dream as “financial security.”

We currently have a presidential candidate running on the platform of “Making America Great Again.” Although I can’t think of a specific time when America was truly “great” (because minorities have always suffered at the expense of the majority), it seems to me that Americans having a dream of being debt free is a wonderful first step down the yellow brick road of our country’s future prosperity--especially being barely eight years removed from the worst economic catastrophe since The Great Depression.

Like Dusty Rhodes, I want my students to leave Coffee County High School and experience the American Dream. However, if we are going to continue our upswing as a society, it’s crucial this election cycle to elect candidates who will fully fund the education system, from Pre-K through college. This state’s poor leadership has created a $1 billion surplus and is not using it to build a solid foundation for future Tennesseans. This is evidenced by the state facing lawsuits from both rural and urban school districts across the state for underfunding K-12 education.

There’s another $1.4 billion in federal money waiting to enter our state, if our legislature would pass Insure Tennessee--a bill that is supported by Governor Haslam and two-thirds of all Tennesseans. This would help the education system because it will put people to work by creating an estimated 15,000 jobs (which means more tax revenue), and 280,000 more Tennesseans will have access to health insurance, thereby decreasing the state’s health care costs. As a result, more money will be available to: fund a universal Pre-K system, give educators a true cost-of-living wage increase that would put us on a level playing field with the rest of the country, and return funding to its universities--many of which have seen their state funding cut in half over the past fifteen years. The American Dream that my students envision for themselves includes being debt-free, and not paying on student loans for two decades or more.