AdvanceBlog

I’m a sports fan.  I have learned so many of life lessons through sports.  My conversations and my perceptions of things are usually seen through the lens of sports metaphors.  My wife cooks something delicious – I hold up both arms to signify that “it’s good” as if it were a field goal.  When I feel a presentation has gone really well, my reply to an inquiry of “how was it” is “nothing but net.”  When faced with a looming deadline and I need to focus my energy, I tell myself “it’s the fourth quarter” and proceed with an earnest effort.

While I am not quite the Hoop Addict that Rashad is; I must say the 700 pages of Bill Simmons’s Book of Basketball were the most humorously delightful and insightful reading I’ve done in years.  It also provided another sports lens through which I could perceive my profession.

While Magic Johnson and the Showtime Lakers was my team of choice as a child, I never discounted the tenacity and talent of the Boston Celtics.  In fact, I held them in sort of a respectful fear.  The type of fear that led me to believe Magic needed to play his best ball if the Lakers were going to win.

At the age of eleven, tragedy struck as I learned that sports stars are not invulnerable.  I learned they are human and subject to the sometimes-harsh lessons of life.  That tragedy was the death of Len Bias.

Click photo for link to awesome ESPN documentary clips

But this blog isn’t about Len Bias or the circumstances around his death; instead it is about the void created within the organization due to his death.   Len Bias was an extraordinary talent who most certainly would have spent a few years as Larry Bird’s understudy and had been prepared to provide leadership to the Celtics for the next ten years or so.  But it never happened.  With his death, the future of Boston Celtics was hurled into organizational disarray highlighted by ensuing years of losing.

What I am afraid of is school years of disarray highlighted by years of losing kids.  How does that happen?  It happens when the Len Biases of our profession, novice and non-tenured staff, do not stay with the profession long enough to learn how to carry the championship mantel.  With the Celtics, Bird, Kevin McHale’s and Robert Parrish’s playing days came to an end and although there were players on the roster, none possessed the prodigious talent of Len Bias.  None were talented enough, committed enough, and passionate enough to win championships.  It appears that during the drought between Celtic championships, those “in-between” players were just collecting a check.

Just collecting a check – that’s what unenthused, “those-kids-are-the-problem”, counting-the-days to vacation teachers are doing.  Yes, they are on the team. Yes, they are certified to teach. But essentially, they are just occupying space; space that belongs to the Len Biases, the prodigious talents of education.

What’s even more frightening is that the over-emphasis on standardized testing and the lack of invested resources toward teacher development and retention will prove that the losing seasons of public education will last much longer than those of the Celtics.