I was at a hotel in Carlsbad, CA on Sunday and aside from amazing weather and really good food, there was something else notable in the air.

NFL Rookie Camp. A mandatory seminar for all NFL rookies.

I saw scores of stud football players just lounging around. (Their workday began Monday… Sunday was check in.)

No need for me to name drop because, truth is, none of these guys have done one darn thing in the world of professional sports… yet. Though a few of them are already multi-millionaires based on their college exploits, draft status and so on, the land of NFL dreams, stardom and so on had not yet hit in full stride in their lives.

But it was cool to see.

And why does the NFL have a Rookie Camp? It’s for the “life” side of being an NFL player. This had nothing to do with weights, 40 yard dash times, 225 lb. reps or any of that. This was where the NFL put all of its rookies through mandatory session on life skills such as…

• managing your money
• watching out for gold diggers
• gambling protocol
• talking to the media
• getting ahold of counseling services for drugs, emotional/psychological issues

… stuff like that.

I saw scores of beefy, idolized young men on their way to having a variety of mentors illuminate for them the traps and pitfalls of becoming a professional athlete.

Now, for the NFL, this makes good business sense. Fans pay big money for Super Bowl tix, jerseys, season passes and luxury boxes. Matter of fact, as a tv franchise, the NFL seems immune to any sort of recession whatsoever. Football has always been big yet these days, it’s bigger than ever.

And keeping its players out of the news for jail, arrests, drugs, battery and so on, well, it’s good for the health of the industry. Billionaires know this, which is why they spend a few million teaching these kids some stuff.

Now do the kids learn it? Not all of them. No. But I got to speak to a few and could see that the gravity of what was upon them was already beginning to reframe their thinking.

It got me thinking, what if we put all our young men in this country through some sort of “mentorship” program that was mandatory? A place where they’d get a taste of Scared Straight mixed in with a few “watch out for this pitfall” chats complemented by a “Call this phone number if __X__ happens” and so on.

Would it not make good sense for society? Fiscally, morally, and so on, so may of our young men are just cast adrift and when I looked at how these coddled college athletes were being hand-held all the way through to the doorway of adulthood it made me realize that 1) those that do end up on the police blotters have got to be real klonk-heads because the NFL is going all out in its own way (even if it is just to protect their own investment) and 2) if society showed as much smarts about shepherding ALL young men from boyhood to manhood in a more overt, direct and thoughtfully guided manner, our entire nation would be better served.

NFL Rookie Camp… it’s so, so smart. Society… not so much.

Teachers as they are portrayed by the media. Hmmm. Is it a topic even worth tackling?

I mean if we teachers are looking to the media to give us a fair and sensible shake, I think we’re gonna be holding our breaths a long freakin’ time.

Truly, as I have said before, when I look at schools across the country (I am fortunate to visit lots of them) and see the work that is being done, I think, “Ya know, teachers, for the most part, are the good guys.”

But to listen to the media one would we think we are the cause of all that is wrong as opposed to the reason that so much is right.

I guess that’s why I love this blog. I get to say what I think and feel in an unvarnished manner. Really, I don’t give a damn if I hurt a lemon teacher’s feelings because if you are not carrying your own weight on campus, someone needs to call you out… because you are shortchanging the kids!

However, most teachers are carrying their own weight. Plus a hell of a lot more. It’s insane how much we do. It’s even more insane how much is being asked of us to do.

And the “to do” list just keeps growing.

Do I really think the media wants to grasp the complexity of this situation? No. Because media in this day and age is filled with lots of smart people trying to dumb down complex ideas into simple, clear-cut, concrete boxes of ideas around which they can sell advertising space.

Teachers in the media need to be over-simplified. Either they are nice, sweet, tea-sipping, apple pie eating church-goers or they are low down, dirty, conniving, reprehensible scoundrels.

So where do the rest of us (and by that I mean the other 98% of us; 1% at each end of the spectrum) fit in?

Should teachers pay for their own lesson plans? Would teachers pay for their own lesson plans?

Even if they were only two bucks a pop?

Okay, on one hand, as teachers, we already pay for so many of our school supplies that adding another $2 to the fire here and there doesn’t seem to bother me much. (As long as the materials were of high quality.) On the other hand though, if the school site isn’t to be expected to pay for the educational resources I use in the classroom, what the heck are they paying for, the rent on the building?

Is my district just a landlord with a whole lotta goofy, bean-counting, bubble test rules? (Don’t answer that.)

Maybe I’m just employed under the barbershop model whereby I work at a station but I am required to bring my own scissors, hair gel and blow dryer in order to do my job and they’ll provide the toilet paper in the restroom, but it will be the cheap, rough kind. Free, but grainy, a devil’s compromise if ever there was one.

Sure would be nice if I knew the terms of our fiscal agreement on these matters though, wouldn’t it?

I mean really, what is my school supposed to pay for? And what should I be expected to pay for? And where is it written what is what so that there is some transparency to the process of all of this?

And how come after all these years as a teacher I still really do not know the answer to this stuff?

Is this like one of those “need to know” matters where I don’t have security clearance that’s high enough to be welcomed into the loop?

What should they buy, what should I buy and why-oh-why does the thought of all this always make me want to sigh, cry and kiss this job “goodbye”?

A price war has broken out with E-readers. And the most famous E-reader in the bunch, the Amazon Kindle, has just dropped in cost from $259 to $189 in order to keep pace with the fast-growing competition.

You can read more about this price war, as well as the Nook, the Kobo and so on, here.

But the reason this story interests me so much is because people are already starting to talk about the idea that if a customer buys enough content for one of these machines, they might just give the physical E-reading device away to them free. Or at least at a very, very low cost.

Think about computer printers. It’s an akin business model being talked about right now. The cost of the printer isn’t making the big bucks for these companies; it’s the fact that they can milk us all and charge us an arm and a leg for all the subsequent ink we buy once we own them… and that’s what keeps the real cash flowing into their coffers.

Might academic publishers – especially the textbook companies – soon begin to play this game with our schools?

You know they have to be thinking right now about selling a package whereby their textbooks are digitally pre-loaded on “free” E-Readers which then become an all-in-one purchase for a school. ELA, Science, History, Math… is the day not coming where the big companies make the pitch that they
can transform your school into a 21st century institution by giving you a free E-reader if only you buy ALL of their curricular content.

It would be green.

It would be digital.

It would cover all core academic areas.

It would turn heads.

Of course with some of these companies it’s still going to be like putting lipstick on a pig. I mean watered-down, sanitized, one-size-fits-all curriculum is wrong-headed and ineffective no matter how you package (or re-package) it. And of course, by not providing a device that can access the internet, you are leaving a host of amazing learning opportunities on the table for teachers and students.

Yet once you own the “free” device, they can then continue to sell you their new/extra-curricula/latest-greatest thing (think “ink”). After all, once they plant this free E-reader flag in our schools, it’ll be a decade before anyone re-buys new digital reading devices anyway. (Counting on the sloth of our schools has got to be one of their business strategies. Heck, I am sure behind closed doors, they factor it in now.)

Perhaps, if they give it to you “free” they will even program these machines to only read proprietary material. Sure, it’s an E-reader, but maybe it will be an E-reader that only reads “approved” content.

Good selling point to our schools, right? “Protect your kids from the dangers of the world wide web by controlling what they intellectually digest… by Ronco!”

And only Ronco.

Trust Ronco to teach you about the world!

Then again, if they do make these machines web accessible, then why would schools need to buy all the excess content these big, behemoth companies continually provide? Why couldn’t we just buy chapter 3, 6 & 11 in Math, Chapters 2, 4 & 7 in science, chapters 1-4 in history and then go open source/supplementation style with the rest of the curriculum? After all, so much excellent FREE content is available on the web that it’s a literal shame more schools do not have the tools to use it. Plus, many, many educational publishing companies have been over-selling us materials for years (they bloat their books to charge more, I am sure of it), yet we now live in the age of iTunes whereby if I do not want to buy the whole album, I don’t have to… I can just buy the song I want.

Can’t I also just buy the song I want when it comes to education?

Isn’t that some sort of rule in capitalism and free market activity?

Ultimately, this seems to lead me back to the iPad and all of its amazing capabilities. When I look at tablet computing, E-readers already appear obsolete to me. Sure, they may survive in a niche marketplace (I do like the way they read; e-ink is cool and easy on the eyes) but it appears to me
that a swan song is already getting ready to be played.

In the article I cited, they called it a “race to the bottom”.

Kindle, we hardly knew ya.

All in all, I have no idea how all of this is going to shake out… but if you think the past 5 years was characterized by upheaval and unique possibilities (think about the invention of YouTube, the iPhone and Twitter) just wait to see what happens in the next five years.

Buckle up, Folks – one thing for sure is that the inevitable shift to schools that use more digital ink and less printed paper ain’t gonna be smooth.

I am totally thrilled that the movie Waiting for Superman is going to be hitting theaters in a few months. And why?

Because we need a national conversation about education to take center stage in this country and when you look at what the director Davis Guggenheim did with the movie An Inconvenient Truth, well… I gotta believe that if our educational system got even 1/8 of the attention that environmentalism did as a result of this movie, it’d be a good, good, good thing.

Rocks are going to be lifted in this film. And sure enough, there are going to be accusations from all political corners about truthfulness, editing, parents, culture, and so on. The filmakers gotta know that they are going to get blistered by people with agendas.

Good. Like talk radio, the more the audience gets angered, the more attention will be driven to the issues we face.

And I don’t really think I need to cite a laundry list of the issues we face. (Just read my blog history and you’ll see a sampling of some of my own “issues”.)

Lifting up a whole host of rocks, seeing the slimy things that crawl and bringing on a dialogue about public education in the U.S. excites me.

And I hope it sweeps the world. The United States should feel very good about public education. We have some outstanding schools.

But we should feel very ashamed as well. It seems inarguable that we are falling immensely short of our potential. A bare knuckle, very public brawl strikes me as just the impetus to light a few fires.

I welcome this film. And I welcome all the controversy it’s going to inevitably bring. Hopefully, the am radio will be blowing up for a few years. Silence and apathy are far most troublesome than debate.

Inattention is to be feared worse than anything. Let the hurling begin!

Click here to see the trailer for the movie.

I am not quite sure I realize the pace at which I work until I try to slow down.

What’s that scientific principle? “An object in motion tends to stay in motion and an object at rest tends to stay at rest.”

Mo-ment-um. When it’s going with you, is there anything better? But when it stutters, and when you slow down, it’s just like walking uphill in the mud to try and get it going again.

This is my perpetual fear about trying to, as Covey says, sharpen the saw. On one hand I know I need some R-n-R time. On the other hand, I am afraid that if I take a break and slow it down too much for too long, I won’t pick it all back up again.

I know, I know, sounds like the tell-tale signs of a workaholic, right? If I was counseling someone else, I’d tell them not to be afraid of rest and rejuvenation. But do we ever really take the advice we sagely try to offer to others?

I know I try to… but don’t. It’s just yet another was in which I am a hypocrite trying to live honestly. The golden rule says DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD HAVE THEM DO UNTO YOU.

What gemstone is the rule ADVISE UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD ADVISE UNTO YOURSELF EVEN IF YOU KNOW YOURSELF SO WELL THAT YOU WOULDN’T FOLLOW YOUR OWN ADVISE ANYWAY, DESPITE THE FACT THAT IT’S SMART AND MAKES GOOD SENSE?

If I have the faith to let go for a little bit, will it all slip away?

Can we ever really break away from our work in order to come fully back?

At the base of the Pyramid, level 1, block 1 (reading left to right) is the notion of industriousness. As Wooden says – quite clearly – hard work matters.

A lot. And I quote (This is Wooden on industriousness): “In plain language, I mean you have to work – and work hard. There is no substitute for work. None. Worthwhile things come from real work.”

I have come to believe deeply in the idea of industriousness. Why? Because I view myself as a slacker. A not-so-hard worker. These days, it’s not really true, but it used to be.

See, back when I was a kid, school came so easy for me that I coasted. And this was when I was a rich kid in private school. (My father and grandfather were both lawyers.) Then, when my parents got divorced (bitterly) the family fortune was lost and I started attending a middle school (public) where 50% of the kids were African American.

Elite private schools to (what is now) a Title I middle school. Talk about dropping off the edge of a cliff. In sixth grade my “advanced” classes were covering material I had seen in 3rd grade – literally. So I became a screw-off. A class clown. The kind of wise-ass that had all the answers and thought that everything in life was gonna come easy to me because it always had before.

Talk about setting the stage for a rude awakening! By my mid-twenties I was a complete wreck having learning via the school of Hard Knocks that life doesn’t give a damn about self-perceived talent/entitlement/intelligence/aptitude.

Hard work trumps “giftedness” every day of the week.

As Teddy Roosevelt once said in one of my favorite quotes…

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

– Theodore Roosevelt

That was me. Mr. Thinks-He-Can-Do-It-All-Without-Giving-A-Blood-Sweat-and-Tears effort. Like I said, my life was a train wreck and I descended pretty deep into the darkness looking for shortcuts out of my misery until, well… Mr. Wooden turned on a fantastic light bulb for me.

For someone who thought themselves to be so smart (me) I was acting like a real fool (also me).

I needed to become industrious. Instead of viewing the world from a white collar perch, I needed to transform myself into a blue collar worker.

Hard work is admirable. Hard work is fulfilling. Hard work reaps real results. I believed in those things, I just never applied them to my own life.

As Somerset Maugham once said: An unfortunate thing about this world is that the good habits are much easier to give up than the bad ones.

Ain’t that the truth!

Transforming myself into an “industrious” type required a ton of effort. But really, what it required was a mentor. A teacher. Someone showing me the way with a flashlight, a person illuminating the path, pointing out the game plan and offering up a roadmap.

Sure, I was born with talent. But I don’t think that makes me unique. All of us – despite the cliched nature of this statement – are, in my estimation, born with talent.

But how many of us were born with a sense of industriousness that could serve as the wings to allow this talent to soar? I sure wasn’t.

It had to be taught to me. Yet more importantly, I had to be ready to listen. As a teacher I know that you can lead a student to knowledge but you can’t make them think. Well, the converse is true as well: if you lead a thirsty student to knowledge, you can’t stop them from drinking deeply at the well.

What’s that saying, once the student is ready, the master will appear?

That’s how the notion of industriousness popped into my life. And WOW did it change everything. Really, I didn’t dive into Wooden until I was in my early 30′s. Now, I am in my early 40′s and have published 10 books with some of the biggest publishers on the planet and won all kinds of accolades. Perhaps the ability was always there but the tools to liberate the powers within me were not.

Until Wooden.

And now, as a high school teacher in my own classroom, I value industrious almost above all else. Give me a hard working C student any day of the week over a coasting A student who feels entitled due to their parents’ financial status, their own self-perceived IQ, their physical attractiveness… whatever.

Worker bees build beautiful hives.

I don’t think it’s an accident that Industriousness is located where it is on the Pyramid of success. It’s foundational.

And it certainly liberated me from my own self-created jail.

John Wooden passed away on June 4, 2010 at the age of 99. He became famous for his accomplishments as a college basketball coach hitting unprecedented levels of championship status as a coach (his feats have still never been replicated in the NCAA) but his greatest achievement, in my eyes, was the creation of his aptly named Pyramid of Success.

Though sports is segment of American culture right now which has grown to a level which seems almost out of control, I believe that the best coaches are teachers. And from Wooden, the coach – though I never had the privilege of meeting the man – I have learned much about Alan, the man.

And so, in honor of his passing, I am going to take a look at the Pyramid of Success and go level by level, lending my own personal take on John Wooden’s crown jewel, doing so in the interest of introducing others to something which I find to be of immense value, both on a personal and professional level.

There are 15 levels to the Pyramid. One by one I will talk about each of these but obviously, this is a system whereby the sum is greater than the parts.

Now perhaps not everything will always apply to a classroom. So what? In my experience, each of the ingredients does apply to “qualities of personhood” which is a subject that greatly interests me.

It’s also a subject (i.e. character education) that I think is one of the most under-recognized aspects of public education. As I have said before, the bubble tests only have one character related subject; don’t cheat on the bubble tests which, in my estimation, gives every public school a green light to pass up on teaching aspects of high quality character in the name of teaching core skills.

Well, skills without character, no matter how acute, refined, or brilliant, are a dangerous combination. From Enron to Wall Street and on and on and on, we have, in my estimation, an obligation to raise young people of good stead… and without strong character, there is no way to claim we are doing such a thing.

And this has nothing to do with religion. This is about personhood which is why Wooden holds so much appeal to me. No one “group” gets to claim self-appointed superiority. The Pyramid of Success is agnostic yet universal; applicable to all, shunned by the unwise.

Clearly, I am no Wooden and my own opinions are just that… my own opinions. They will fall short, they will tangent, they will do goodness knows what as I explore this terrain in a new, digital way.

But that’s yet another great thing about the Pyramid of Success… people like me can fall short of re-interpreting it and still the core philosophy stands unblemished accessible to all straight from the source itself.

Matter of fact, it is Wooden’s own thoughts which emboldened me to tackle this idea in the first place. He said:

“If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything. I’m positive that a doer makes mistakes.”

There is great liberation in not having to be perfect. It frees one up to try their best.

And so I will. Here’s the Pyramid. (This may take a while… but don’t all things of value?)

I’ve come to a time in my life whereby I am realizing more and more that I will not be able to make it through all the books I hope to read.

Not even close.

To a certain degree, this bums me out. On the other hand, c’est la vie, right? I mean if this is the greatest problem I ever encounter in my life, I’d be the most blessed person to ever walk the planet.

This realization comes to the fore for me in a pronounced way right now because when I look out at all the time I have his summer to be a reader – and a writer – I realize that while it certainly is bountiful, it ain’t squat.

Time, not money, is life’s true currency and the rich person, I realize, is one who gets to spend their time as they wish.

With this thought in mind, I am going to try and be more thoughtful about the manners in which I spend my literary time. One thing I do know is that reading and writing fills my soul. (Teaching, too, but it’s summer break so I am not exactly pining to head back to my classroom but 2 days in to vacation.) Yet, with so little time to tackle so much, I am forced to be discriminating, if not downright snootily selective.

On the reading front, I am always on the lookout for something good but I have a giant list of titles which I never tackled… and by not having read these books, I feel, to some extent, incomplete. The first of which is The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. (Click here to identify what your “I must read ___________ book before I die” is.)

http://static.ning.com/socialnetworkmain/widgets/index/logo.gif); background-attachment: initial; background-origin: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: white; background-position: 100% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; “>Sadly, I don’t think I am going to get to write all the books I want to write either. I might even step away from the classroom to go full-time as a writer in the near future to make more headway on this front (writing is that meaningful to me) but even then, I still don’t believe I will get anywhere close to executing all the projects I have floating around between my ears.

For my writing projects, I choose them out of sheer ambition. Each book I write is breaking new ground (for me) so if I feel the fire in the belly for a project, and it is something which I believe will force me to reach, stretch and grow, I am eager to take it on. Funny how this doesn’t translate to becoming erudite though. My latest foray – the place where the fire has burned most brightly in the belly for me – has been YA comedy. After a host of books that range from deep grit to urban drama, I wanted to flex my funny bone – and prove (at least to myself) that I can write high quality humor. As many writers will attest, cranking out a make you laugh-out-loud book is one of the most challenging things to do. I like that challenge.

Plus, I like fart jokes… so perhaps I can catch wind of how to approach such a massive, gaseous task.

Either way, I may also slow down on the blogging front as well. Perhaps less will be more? After all, cranking out 3 blogs a week as opposed to 6, well… is there really anyone who is going to miss my witty repartee?

Time is our currency… I think I need to be a bit more mindful these days. I sense the sands in the hourglass a bit more than I used to.

Summer vacation has started and while I am not at school it doesn’t really yet feel like summer vakay.

But it will. (I am determined to make that happen.)

However, right now it just feels like I have a Monday off… but one where I am looking over my shoulder waiting for someone to say to me, “Back to the Salt Mines, Buster! And this time, we’re doubling the importance of the bubble tests!”

Irrational fears always surface when you are coming down off of such a long bender of bubble test mania, no?

Truth is, it usually takes me a bit to detox. I am still all-too-wrapped-up in the stuff I was wrapped up in for the past 10 months when the truth is, those 10 months are now over and I have 2 months to prepare for the 10 months that will follow (you know, the time when Fall will rear its never-ending, marathon-esque head).

Summer, however, is a time to break out of some patterns, reflect on some of the directions I want to take, grab a bit of more human-like sleep, eat some good food, indulge in some oh-so-awesome family time, and try to regain a sense of balance in life.

Cause when you are a teacher, you lose those. From sleep to diet, stress level to family time, being a teacher takes a lot from a lot of different parts of your life in a lot of different ways.

A good novel always helps as well. I’ve currently got 8 books sitting by my bed, 3 in my iPad, and still it feels as if I don’t have anything to read.

Don’t ya just hate that?

Indeed, I will be writing a new book. (Actually, I am working on two of them at the same time right now… while doing some copyedits on two others and cranking out more BookJams… but such is my professional writing life and this is what I love so I ain’t complaining at all.) And when I look at the schedule ahead, I realize how busy my summer schedule actually is.

But in feeling this “to do” pressure (you know, the kind where you spend a lot of time thinking about all your “to do” lists) I am reminded of something I once heard a cruise ship tour guide tell me. (FYI, yes, I love cruises. Matter of fact, might I propose an ECN ning cruise right now? We can take over an entire boat to the Mediterranean and go visit Greece before it defaults on its loans and gets sealed off and turned into a debtor’s prison. Anyway, the cruise guy said to me…)

“You tourist folks come in on Mondays tense about your dinner reservations and walking around with all your agendas… then by Thursday, you don’t give a damn about anything more minor than our captain hitting icebergs. Happens every time we set sail.”

That’s kind of me right now. I start off summer tense and knotted and in the world of “to do” and then in three weeks I am Mr. Friendly neighbor having impromptu Tuesday night bbq’s.

The school year has a cycle… but so does summer vakay: tension followed by a release of tension.

Let that journey begin!