It has been said that a late, great football coach from the Glory Years of Alabama Crimson Tide football would often kick the hinges off the locker room doors when he wanted to inspire his football team. Legend has it, he would bark that it was a great day to play football, “so let ‘em all see you play boys.”I never liked the idea of a closed door when I was a classroom teacher. Even as the North Carolina State Teacher of the Year it bothered me that many teachers across the state would shut their doors when they were teaching. It frustrates me that so many great teachers, who are doing amazing things in their classrooms, are shutting their doors and not sharing their successes. In fact, I think they should be screaming from the top of Grandfather Mountain (or Jockey’s Ridge in the East) about the wonderful learning going on in their classroom.
I feel the same about principals and other school leaders. I just can’t seem to get my head around the idea that the accomplishments, the experiments that succeed, the chances that are taken and work, and the wins, aren’t celebrated for every school leader and teacher to cheer for and to copy. If imitation is such a great compliment, then we all should be more open to be imitated—especially when we are talking about the education of North Carolina Public School Students.
With that said, I have recently spent some time in a number of counties that up until my visit were not sharing with other schools what they were doing as it pertained to virtual education. And the things that they were doing, they were great things.
So let us kick down some doors.
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