Here are two stories about teachers. One picked from the Internet and the other is a story my father told me.
The Blueberry Story: The teacher gives the businessman a lesson
“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!”
I stood before an auditorium filled with
outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had
entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of inservice. Their initial
icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the
hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people
dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice
cream company that became famous in the middle1980s when People Magazine
chose our blueberry as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”
I was convinced of two things. First, public
schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting
mechanisms designed for the industrial age and out of step with the
needs of our emerging “knowledge society”. Second, educators were a
major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their
feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic
monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce
quality. Zero defects! TQM! Continuous improvement!
In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced - equal parts ignorance and arrogance.
As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up.
She appeared polite, pleasant – she was, in fact, a razor-edged,
veteran, high school English teacher who had been waiting to unload.
She began quietly, “We are told, sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.”
I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, Ma’am.”
“How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?”
“Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed.
“Premium ingredients?” she inquired.
“Super-premium! Nothing but triple A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a
wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your
receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive,
what do you do?”
In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap…. I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie.
“I send them back.”
“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never
send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted,
exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and
brilliant. We take them with ADHD, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and
English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that,
Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business. It’s school!”
In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals,
bus drivers, aides, custodians and secretaries jumped to their feet and
yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”
And so began my long transformation.
Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I
have learned that a school is not a business. Schools are unable to
control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the
vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are
constantly mauled by a howling horde of disparate, competing customer
groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.
None of this negates the need for change. We
must change what, when, and how we teach to give all children maximum
opportunity to thrive in a post-industrial society. But educators cannot
do this alone; these changes can occur only with the understanding,
trust, permission and active support of the surrounding community. For
the most important thing I have learned is that schools reflect the
attitudes, beliefs and health of the communities they serve, and
therefore, to improve public education means more than changing our
schools, it means changing America.
A student visits a teacher in the Hospital
My father was a high school teacher. In one of his classes, he observed a student. He was not attentive. He was gossiping with other students. My father warned him a couple of times. But, the student continued to disturb. In a fit of rage, he threw the duster at him. It hit his fore head. He started bleeding profusely. My father dismissed to class and went to see the headmaster to report what happened. The head master was alarmed. He said the student is son of a local politician and the incident is sure to cause trouble for the school and my father. He advised my father to take leave and disappear for a while. My father followed his advice.
Many years later, my father was admitted to the hospital for a surgery. Many people visited him. An young man visited him with a bouquet of flowers and wished quick recovery. My father told him that he could not recognize him. The young man told him that he is a bank manager. He was a student in the school where my father worked. It was he who was subjected the duster missile and that that incident had changed his life. He became a serious student and eventually did well in his career.
I was amazed to see that being hit by a duster made him grateful enough to visit my father in the hospital when he heard about his illness.
Happy teachers' day!
