With the close of last school year, I completed my 30th campaign in education. Each of those years has been filled with joy and sorrow, challenges and successes, ups and downs and a ton of stories worth sharing. My (True) Life in Education Thus Far will detail 30 or so of those stories. I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed living (most) of them!
BETTER TO HAVE NO EVENT THAN A BAD EVENT
August 24, 2022
At Bishop McNamara High School, I was offered and accepted the position of Student Council Moderator. I cannot recall if this offer was in my first year at the school or in my second (I suspect it was in my second), but I guess it was the second year. Why in the world would anyone in their right mind trust a brand new teacher with this responsibility in his first year?
Regardless, it was a role I took on happily because, first, I wanted to work with students and, second, I was happy for the stipend!
My department chair, Mr. Al Odierno, who remains a towering figure in my development as an educator and administrator, had served in this capacity in the past. As I was planning some event – it was likely a pep rally, a high school programming requirement the staging of which I would come to resist in future years – and becoming frustrated with it, Al sat me down.
He literally scheduled time with me to talk about what he saw as my frustration. Wow.
He said to me: “it’s better to have no event than a bad one. If it’s not working, shut it down. Everyone will thank you.”
We had the pep rally. It went fine. I think. I do not remember that it did not, so it must have, right? At the end of the day, the pep rally was not the important thing. The advice was.
It is better to have no event than a bad event. Al’s words have stuck with me year-after-year. I think of them – and him – frequently.
