A Practice Regimen for the Big Game

During a casual conversation with a student, during let’s call it “her” last week of school as a senior, “she” asked what I thought was the biggest problem in the high school today. Lots of things went running through my mind, and all of them were fairly valid. I could give a pretty good reason for worry if I was talking to right set of parents, or the right teacher, or the right student. For example, as with any high school, I think we as teachers, parents, and community members would be shocked by how many students drink and how many students drink often. I think we would be even more shocked if we knew specific names, because we might not suspect all of the “angels” from our classrooms, volunteer work, youth groups and our sporting teams to also be drinkers. To take this a step further, I think we would be even more shocked, or maybe even appalled by the kids who are doing some form of drugs, be that illegal or stolen from the medicine cabinets of their friends and family. But that is just the standard worries that have been going on for generations. In fact, those worries have gone on for so long, that some people don’t even worry about it anymore. “I did it when I was a kid and I turned out just fine,” can be heard across the nation as our kids are getting into trouble.

And so, as I thought… and thought… what is the real trouble in the high school today… and “she” stared at me, not letting me off the hook and waiting for my answer. I started to bounce ideas off “her.” I began with a question.

• “How much do you really challenge yourself? How much do you really challenge yourself to do better in any given aspect of your life on a daily basis?”
• She had an answer, “in sports, every day. I work hard and push myself every day.”
• So I asked another question. “So, will you be doing sports in college, or is that over now that you will be graduating?”
• Her answer was “no.”
• “So you have spent the last four years pushing yourself to be the best you can be and now that is over. What have you done in the last four years to push yourself academically – to daily improve yourself?”
• Her blank stare was all the answer I needed, but she reached for words anyway. “I got good grades. I took classes that look good on my transcripts.”
• “But that doesn’t answer my question, now does it? What have you done academically, that equals pushing yourself in yourself in sports the way you have over the last four years, that will pay off when you leave this small town and go off to college to get an education, and step into the real world where your education really begins? What type of “practice regimen” have you used to push yourself to get to the “big game”?

Do you know what I think is the biggest problem we have in high schools today? Procrastination, lack of motivation, laziness… call it what you will. But even if it doesn’t have a word to describe it, it is something that teachers can’t give you, it has to be something that students want for themselves. Teachers can try to instill it. Parents can try to cultivate it. Family members can try to foster it. Community members can encourage it. And in the end, it is the student who has to want it for themselves. We try to teach our kids to not be selfish, to share with others, to take turns, but when it comes to an education, you have to take it. You have you demand it. You have earn it. You can’t get it by being lazy, skipping class, not doing homework, wandering the hallways, taking the easy classes, or “sliding your way to graduation” because college won’t be like that, and neither will the work world.

The real question is: how do we get kids to listen earlier? How do we get them to understand as freshmen and sophomores what this student realized in her last week of high school? (And yes, I have shared this with younger students.)