By Dr. John E. Chapman III
Educating students is not an easy task. Educating students is a lot like trying to grow a bamboo tree. Chinese Bamboo grows very quickly and grows to over 80 feet tall within a 6-week period. It is absolutely amazing to watch, but that doesn’t sound too much like educating students…well, for the rest of the story…
Chinese Bamboo grows very quickly, but it only grows in the 5th year of planting. What makes this tree unique, and not to mention frustrating, is the fact that once the bamboo is planted, it has to be watered for five long years before you see any type of growth. You can imagine the amount of patience, nurturing and consistency it takes to water the same dirt spot before you see the fruits of your labor.
Not knowing that inside the dirt, the seed has been gaining strength and purpose while you can’t see it. The seed appears stagnate for four years then on the 5th year, it just seems to take off and becomes beautiful practically overnight.
Our kids are much the same way. Some students come to us like dandelions, ready to bloom and grow quickly. Some come to us like the bamboo seed appearing stagnate and stunted until one day, they get it.
Then their world explodes around them and they finally understand what you and all others before you have been teaching them—they become a tall beautiful tree practically overnight. There are those who grow little by little each year and never become really big but they have a firm foundation and cannot be broken with the blowing of the wind. And finally, you have those who come to you in perfect clay pots. These are perhaps the hardest ones to understand. They look great from the outside, appearing perfectly acceptable in their appearance and actions but all the while—their inner foundation is broken, it’s hollow. Eventually, their broken foundation will cause the pot to break, shattering in millions of pieces. It is up to us to help them pick up the pieces and glue them back together. They may look different now all glued and pieced back together, but their foundation is firmer than it was in the beginning and their pots will be so much harder to break.
Each of you has a story to tell. Whatever your story, you made a conscious choice to be in education.
Everyone has a choice, but to some kids, they only understand what their daily circumstances give them…and for a child, those circumstances cannot be overcome without the help of patience and nurturing.
Whether you chose education, or it chose you, you have a choice as adults, you can either BELIEVE in the kids that walk in your room, no matter their strengths and weaknesses, or you can just go through the motions. I hope you choose to BE THE EXCEPTION. Being the exception takes courage because it means often going against the norm. Sometimes being the exception necessitates change. Billy Graham said, “Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.” It takes courage to say that although this hasn’t been done before, I think it will work.
I challenge you that when you walk into your classrooms each and every day, when you serve that hot lunch to a frazzled looking second grader, when you empty that trashcan into the dumpster, when you push that brake on your bus to let a student off, when you look at a spreadsheet of data—I challenge each of you that when you do your job, BE THE EXCEPTION, not the norm. And just when you think that there may be a better way of doing something but are afraid to speak up because it’s always been done this way before, remember what William Faulkner once said…”You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
As you step foot on the school grounds daily, take time and look around you…each person that you see may have a different job than you, but it represents all of the functions that keep a school district moving day in and day out. I appreciate each one of you getting up in the morning doing your job with diligence and a smile on your face.
I look forward to continuing the excellence of CFB, but I am ready to push forward with new ideas that come from you. Together, we can make CFB the best school district in the nation.
