To All,
My writing has veered from this blog in recent years, but I've never stopped writing. I've had a habit of writing once a week to MHS teachers via our Weekly Update. Since it is all internally disseminated and I've neglected this blog, I decided to share a few of these letters to teachers from this past year and I hope readers enjoy them. I've learned I enjoy writing and sharing stories I think will help others in their lifework and journey.
T.
From the Weekly Update:
April 10, 2016
FAILURE to ADAPT
Hi Teachers and Staff,
Ok, story time. A long time ago, in a land far, far away called the June 1988 heat wave of Alabama, I found myself in Fort McClellan sweating my way into the U.S. Army’s BASIC training and Advanced Training course. It was just 2 ½ weeks after graduating from the safety of high school and my world was about to be rocked. If you have a prior background in the military you’ll completely understand my next statements: For a kid coming out of high school or anyone for that matter, the military is another world. It is another culture and way of operating and being in the world. It’s pure culture shock coming out of momma’s house. As I made my way off the bus to what looked like a stark gray and beige concrete prison pod – a.k.a. our barracks, I wound my way up a set of two flights of stairs within the complex to my home for the next five months – a large open room with 4 rows of wall-lockers and metal bunk beds complete with Army issued green wool blankets and no fluff feather pillows. We were asked to line up next to the bunks when the drill sergeant in a “smokey the bear” round brown hat called (or was it barked?) our last names – my first name would disappear in my Army days. Drill Sergeant Tominello was an Italian- American no-nonsense pit bull of a man…his neck and chest were thick and he barked like one too. My fate was sealed when the name “Sheppard” was barked for the bottom bunk then “Robinson” for the bunk above him. I had been assigned my “bunk buddy” a.k.a “battle buddy” by the chance outcome of alphabetical order. Sheppard was a soft, blue-eyed, pale skinned, heavy-set blonde and at 23 he was fresh out of college, but he might as well have been a tame white rabbit of a man, minus the quickness and big ears. At the time he was my “elder” since I was a mere 18 and still hadn’t cracked a book in college. At least at the onset he appeared to be the one that might lead me due to his age and college background, but as the Army set things up in training, he was to be my responsibility during training and I was to be his; if he got into trouble, so did I and vice-versa. I quickly discovered my soft battle buddy was in too deep (yes, a nice 80s reference to the 1986 Phil Collins song which still hit the airwaves regularly a lot back then, but I digress). “Shep” as he became known was always in trouble with drill sergeants and when I say always, I mean every slow hour of the day. He was late to almost all formations, late to chow, forgot his equipment, wore the wrong equipment, lined up in the wrong places, clipped his toenails when he was supposed to be getting his boots on…you name it, he did it wrong. The thing was, everyone messed up some of the time, but everyone tended to correct themselves and adapt – Sheppard however, didn’t. He made the same errors over and over and you probably already guessed it, yours truly was also the recipient for all his correction from drill sergeants. These corrections came in the form of merciless pushups during times everyone else was waiting for chow, or on a break, then add sit ups and anything else drill sergeants could cook up to get Sheppard’s attention – he always had something to be corrected. In the first few weeks, it was evident to the entire Charlie company of roughly 150 soldiers in training that Sheppard was the standout for all the wrong reasons and no matter what I did as his buddy, it wasn’t going to matter. In an environment where anonymity could be an asset to stay out of the drill sergeant’s scope – everyone knew Sheppard. In fact, after several weeks of suffering with Sheppard, drill sergeants didn’t make me share his discipline; they sent me back to the formation when he was called out to do even more pushups and I arrived with him. Yes, there was actually some true mercy in the Army, they let me cut ties to a truly special case of severe ineptitude and I was thankful. Fellow soldiers in training also had a degree of pity on me and often assisted me in my efforts to guide Sheppard the right way - we oftentimes took turns. Except when a guy can’t even get his boots laced in under five minutes, you just can’t do it for him. As time progressed Sheppard’s incidents continued to grow into legend; picture a full company of 149 soldiers geared up to move out to a field training exercise and the commander addressing the troops in formation at attention and standing completely silent when out of nowhere a clatter and clank of equipment raining and scattering down the stairwell and then everywhere across the smooth concrete with Sheppard bungling along trying to wind his way to his rank and squad in the middle of one of the four platoons of almost 50 men and then stepping out tie his shoes. Sheppard spared no volume in his voice or slamming of equipment, it was pure Jerry Lewis, and for you younger folks…think Tommy Boy or an impaired Adam Sandler. The commander could have melted steel with her gaze that day or Sheppard’s head - I think he ducked. As our training neared its end around seven weeks, Sheppard spent more and more time visiting the offices of the Drill Sergeants and the Commander. After several meetings, it was decided: Sheppard would not graduate with Charlie company, he had failed to adapt. Furthermore, he would be granted, after much begging, to be placed next door into Delta company as a recycled soldier - they gave him one final chance before complete discharge. Delta Company was 2-3 weeks behind our training cycle. This meant Sheppard would be required to spend 2-3 more weeks in BASIC training. No one gave him a chance of completing his training requirements. However, this is where his story took an unexpected turn. Sheppard thrived at Delta company which was a mere stone’s throw away and in a nearly identical barracks with identical hardened men and women as drill sergeants. He lost 40 pounds and passed his physical training test. Further, the entire Delta company taunted my own Charlie company in weekend chants that they had made a soldier out of Sheppard – implying our company should be ashamed of the failure to do so. Sheppard then went on to advanced training and graduated just behind our company; he was a new man, made by Delta Company. He was their revival story and our washout story...it was quite a contrast.
So why tell this long story this week? And why tell it 28 years later to all of you? What’s the relationship to education Dr. Rob? Ok, here it comes…a military company is similar to our school organization – we’re the trainers and the trainees are our students. Many of our students come in “soft and ill-prepared” to engage and fail to adapt to high school – sometimes we expect them to come in completely ready to go. We can’t forget that high school differs from pre-k, elementary and middle school in significant ways. I think we have to ask ourselves if we are flexible enough, creative enough, encouraging enough and reasonable enough to catch the kids that are winnable OR are we quick to say, they’re failing to adapt…get them out of my class or my school? Maybe Sheppard, with the right flexibility and encouragement would have made it at Charlie Company and maybe with a little adjustment here and there some of our kids can make it at MHS and HCC. Surely, there are reasonable adult attitudes, corrections, conversations and adjustments we can make to help almost all of our kids. For those that our MHS and HCC organization isn’t equipped to handle, we do have other options with MEC and online courses in Edgenuity, but those could be compared to shipping a student to “Delta Company”…and maybe worse. As we wind down our school year, take a look at what might be just a handful of kids in your classes and ask yourself, “What bit of flexibility – such as meeting during seminar for tutoring or before or after school, or a call or email home, or a written academic recovery plan discussed with parents for your class, might lead to this kid to adapting and learning instead of failing to adapt and not learning? Read also: passing this class or not passing this class?”
Many times, all it takes is our leadership and our reasonable path-making for kids that are still learning to adapt to the rigors of high school…especially FRESHMEN. It might just mean they need you to show you care about them in a small way.
Let me encourage and praise all of you for your own personal resilience to meet the needs of kids – education is tough work, we have learned to adapt to tough challenges and we make a difference. 
T.
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