"We Need Less Pomp and Circumstance and More Substance."

A teacher came up to me after an event a while back and said, "Mr. Brown, what bothers me most about this school is that we can put on a good show, but don't have anything to back it up." She then went on to share her frustrations about the school's ability - before Open House, Back to School Night, or any large community event the school might be hosting - to dress up the bulletin boards in the library and shine the floors in the hallways, while at the same time neglecting the needs of the students and the teachers who serve them.


Her concerns got me thinking about the important balancing the importance of creating learning environments that are clean and aesthetically pleasing with the importance of ensuring that REAL learning is taking place inside of every classroom, everyday. Because I know students deserve both and that when one area is compromised, the other can so quickly fall apart.


As adults who work with young people, we owe it to ourselves to hold ourselves and our schools to the highest of standards. We need to ask ourselves - if the President of the United States or the Governor walked into this school, what would we want him to see? Clean hallways, motivational bulletin boards, and a campus free of graffiti, litter, and dead grass? Of course. But we'd also want him to be able to walk into any classroom on that same campus and see excitement in the eyes of our children. We'd want him to see learning environments where students and teachers are engaging in meaningful, thought-provoking, and respectful ways.


It's these types of environments I help promote with the programs I bring to the schools I serve. Because I believe, deeply and with strong conviction, that our children deserve the VERY best we all have to give. Always and without condition.