Education Reimagined, One Success at a Time – A Man Named Charlie.

Posted on October 9, 2023 by admin

This blog post is a companion piece to my first Podcast on Spotify. The podcast is the first in a series.

The following is the text of the podcast. It will be my intention to post the text of all future podcasts on my blog as well, in the event any listener wishes to have a hard copy of the message.

This series, or audio blog, if you will, is inspired by the belief that every one of us has the ability to make a difference in the lives of the people around us. This makes the job of teachers, staff, and administrators who work with our nation’s children among the most important jobs in all of society.

It is my belief that our nation is in desperate need of a change in the way we teach our children and that the proof is in all we see taking place around us. After this initial episode, my focus will be on a message to teachers encouraging them to embrace TheHawkinsModel© rather than be afraid of the change. It is designed to increase their ability to make a difference in the lives of their students.

But first, let me tell you a story about a man named Charlie, a most unlikely leader who made an enormous difference in the lives of the students, faculty, and staff of the high school in which he worked.

It’s a story that shows just how powerful relationships can be.

Charlie passed away a dozen or so years ago, but he lives on in the hearts of many of the people he touched, both students and teachers.

Every few years, I like to pull the story out, dust if off, and delight in the memory of this special man with whom I spent only a few moments of my life.

One of the teachers who worked with him, shared Charlie’s story in a letter to the editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, a few weeks after his death.

Otherwise, few outside of the Wayne High School community would have known about this special man, and the quiet but enormous impact he made.

Charlie was a black man working in a high school in a diverse urban school district. He did not have an impressive title, did not make a great deal of money, had no formal authority, there were no letters after his name, and he was neither a star athlete nor a celebrity.

Charlie’s stature as a powerful positive leader came only fromthe force of his personality, his dedication to his job, his love of people, and his God-given ability to make people feel important.

He was a human being who, out of the pure generosity of a loving heart, accepted responsibility for making his little corner of the world a better place.

I first heard about Charlie years ago when my kids were in high school, but I just assumed he was one of the kids at school. The first time I met Charlie, I was working as a substitute teacher in this high school I thought I knew so well.

Like other teachers, I was standing next to my classroom, monitoring the hallways during the passing period. It had been a rough day, and I was reeling from difficult period with a math lab when this man came up to me.

He was dressed in a suit and tie, and it never would have occurred to me that he was a custodian until he grabbed a broom from a cart he had left a few feet away and swept up some debris from the floor.

“How is it going, today? Is there anything I can do for you?” He asked. “You just call me if you need something,” he continued and then proceeded to rattle off his name and extension number.

He shook my hand and smiled before continuing down the corridor and I watched him, trying to figure out who the heck he was.

My eyes followed him as he spoke to the students he passed. From the smiles on their faces I can only assume he was smiling, also. Moving on, he gave another student a high five, and then stopped to pick up a couple of broken pencils that lay on the floor.

A dozen yards farther down the hallway, a young girl had been leaning against the wall, alone. I had noticed her earlier as she had a lonely and forlorn look about her and I suspected she had been crying. As this custodian drew closer, he drifted over to her and then stopped, smiled at her, and put his hand on her shoulder.

I could not hear the words that were spoken, but after a few seconds the girl offered up an embarrassed smile, followed seconds later by a laugh. Charlie lingered a moment, in quiet conversation, and then sauntered off, dishing out more high fives to students as he passed.

When I looked back, the girl was still there, standing in the same spot, but she stood a little taller and had a smile on her face. Whatever this man had said to her must have been something she had needed to hear.

Later in the day, in the faculty lounge, I asked a teacher about the custodian in the suit and tie. He laughed, and said, “well, that would have been Charlie.” He went on to say, “he’s a very special guy around here and both the kids and staff love him.”

I asked others about him, including my youngest daughter, now a teacher herself. Whomever I asked, just the mention of his name would evoke a smile, and everyone proceeded to tell me pretty much the same story.

“He is everybody’s friend and always has a kind word to say,” they explained.

Charlie, God rest his charitable soul, was a beautiful human being and a positive leader.

He took pride in keeping things clean for the students and teachers of his school. More importantly, he reached out to people to share his positive attitude. He accepted responsibility for making this high school a better place and for making people feel special and important.

He had a special ability to sense when someone—teacher, student, or substitute teacher—needed a kind word, a high five, or a warm smile. I am certain Charlie never wasted an opportunity to share his gifts.

None of these activities could be found in the job description of a school custodian, but Charlie made them a part of his daily routine. They were a part of who he was. This man demonstrated it is not necessary to have formal authority, nor do we need someone’s permission to be a leader and to make a positive difference to the world and its people.

All one needs is a belief that people—all people—deserve our best effort and that we can make a difference. While doing what many people would consider an unimportant and mundane job, this man changed the world around him. He did it by reaching out to people with a generous heart, simple acts of kindness, reassuring words, and a genuine desire to make each of them feel important and special.

Gifts such as this may brighten only a moment in an otherwise stressful day, but we never know how much of a difference we make when we give the best of ourselves with joy and affirmation.

It is a lesson from which all can all learn when we ask ourselves whether what we do, matters. We can choose to believe every job, well done, adds a little beauty to the world and every smile or act of affirmation can make a difference in the life of another human being.

No doubt Charlie believed he had the most important job in the world. By having a relationship with each of them, Charlie made a difference in the lives of thousands of students and hundreds of educators, while keeping their school clean.

It was the relationships that mattered.

Given what we can learn from Charlie, imagine what teachers can do in their classroom by doing the best job of which they are capable and by making every student feel special and important. Relationships are everything in life and they are everything in teaching. God bless you, Charlie.

The existing education process, the tool on which our teachers must rely has changed only incrementally, over the last half century or more, while the world it exists to serve has changed exponentially. As a result the process has become dysfunctional and has grown obsolete. I believe the education process impedes more than supports the work of teachers and their students.

My work is motivated by my belief that the education process is focused more on conformance and compliance, when what we need is an education model designed to enable teachers to adapt to the unique needs of individual students. The problem we face is that educators have been teaching the same way for so long it is difficult to envision any other way to do what they do.

In addition, our teachers are being asked to bear the brunt of the blame for the disappointing outcomes of so many of our nation’s children. Because they have been under attack for so long, teachers have felt the need to defend themselves, their profession, and their right to collective representation.

The professional mission and purpose of my life is to introduce a new education model to replace the existing education process at work in schools throughout the U.S.

It is my assertion that if our education process, or any other process, is unable to produce the outcomes we need, no matter how hard people work or how qualified they are, the problem rests with the process and it must be reimagined and replaced.

This is what I have endeavored to do in my book, not yet published, Education Reimagined, One Success at a Time: The Hawkins Model©.

A second assertion is that it is only when we stop blaming others and accept responsibility for our problems that we begin to acquire the power to solve them.

Teachers are not the problem with education in America or the reason why so many of our children struggle; just the opposite is true. Teachers are the glue that keeps a flawed education process from devolving into chaos.

All the good things that have happened to students in our schools over the past several decades are a consequence of the dedication, commitment, and capability of our professional teachers. They are, in fact, unsung American heroes who deserve our support and admiration for the essential work they do.

make a difference, students and teacher, diverse urban school district, make people feel important, substitute teacher, positive leader, making people feel special and important, make a positive difference, relationships, education process, education model, unique needs of individual students

A Man Named Charlie: a Most Unlikely Leader!

Posted on December 21, 2022 by admin

If you wonder how much of a difference one individual can make, consider this story about a man named Charlie. His life offered a wonderful example of the power of relationships. He passed away ten years ago but he lives on in the hearts of many of the people he touched, both students and teachers. Every few years, I like to pull the story out, dust if off, and delight in the memory of this special man with whom I spent only a few moments of my life.

Charlie made an enormous difference in the lives of literally thousands of young people and hundreds of adults in the high school all three of my children attended. One of the teachers who worked with him shared Charlie’s story in a letter to the editor of the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, a few weeks after his death. Otherwise, few outside of the Wayne High School community would have known about this special man, and the quiet but enormous impact he made.

Charlie was a black man working in a high school that was somewhere between ten to fifteen percent black. He did not have an impressive title, did not make a great deal of money, had no formal authority, there were no letters after his name, and he was neither a star athlete nor a celebrity. Charlie’s stature as a powerful positive leader came only from the force of his personality, his dedication to his job, his love of people, and his God-given ability to make people feel important. He was a human being who, out of the pure generosity of a loving heart, accepted responsibility for making his corner of the world a better place.

I first heard about Charlie years ago when my kids were in high school, but it did not make a great impression on me. I assumed Charlie was one of the kids at school. The first time, and one of the few times I met Charlie, I was working as a substitute teacher in this high school I thought I knew so well. Like other teachers, I was monitoring the hallways during the passing period, standing next to the door to my classroom. It had been a rough day and I was reeling from difficult period of a math lab class when this man came up to me.

He was dressed in a sport coat, slacks and tie and it never would have occurred to me he was a custodian until he grabbed a broom from a cart he had left a few feet away and swept up some debris from the floor.

“How is it going, today? Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked. “You just call me if you need something,” he continued and then proceeded to rattle off his name and extension number. He shook my hand and smiled before continuing down the corridor and I watched him, trying to figure out who in the heck he was.

My eyes followed him as he spoke to a couple students he passed. From the smiles on their faces I can only assume he was smiling, also. Moving on, he gave another student a high five, and then stopped to pick up a couple of broken pencils that lay on the floor.

This made me immediately suspicious because we are told, frequently and pointedly, not to touch the students, especially members of the opposite gender. I could not hear the words that were spoken, but after a few seconds the girl offered up an embarrassed smile, followed seconds later by a laugh. Charlie lingered a moment in quiet conversation, and then sauntered off, dishing out more high fives to students as he passed. When I looked back the girl was still there, standing in the same spot but she stood a little taller and had a smile on her face. Whatever this man had said to her must have been something she had needed to hear.

I asked others about him, including my youngest daughter, now a teacher herself. Whoever I asked, just the mention of his name would evoke a smile, and everyone proceeded to tell me pretty much the same story. “He is everybody’s friend and always has a kind word for you,” my daughter explained.

Charlie, God rest his charitable soul, was a beautiful human being and positive leader. He took his job seriously and took pride in keeping the school clean for the students and teachers. Even more importantly, he reached out to people to share his positive attitude. He accepted responsibility for making this high school a better place and for making its people feel special and important.

He had a special ability to sense when someone—teacher, student, or substitute teacher—needed a kind word, a high five, or a warm smile and I am certain Charlie never wasted an opportunity to share his gifts. None of these activities could be found in the job description of a school custodian but Charlie made them a part of his daily routine. They were a part of who he was.

This man demonstrated it was not necessary to have a title, formal authority, or even someone’s permission to be a leader and to make a positive difference to the world and its people. All one needs is a belief that people—all people—deserve our best effort and that we can make a difference. While doing what most people would consider an unimportant and mundane job, this man changed the world around him. He did it by reaching out to people with a generous heart, a simple act of kindness, reassuring words, and a genuine desire to make each of them feel special.

Gifts such as this may brighten only moment in an otherwise stressful day, but we never know how much of a difference we make when we give the best of ourselves with joy and affirmation. It is a lesson from which all can all learn whenever we wonder if what we do matters. We can choose to believe every job, well done, adds a little beauty to the world and every smile or simple act of kindness is an affirmation to another human being.

No doubt Charlie believed he had the most important job in the world. By having a relationship with each of them, Charlie made a difference in the lives of twelve hundred students and a hundred members of a school’s faculty and staff, while giving them a clean place in which to do their important work.

It was the relationships that mattered. Given what we can learn from Charlie, imagine what teachers and administrators can do in their classroom and schools by doing the best job of which each is capable and by making every student feel special and important.

Relationships are everything in life, leadership and teaching.

God bless you, Charlie.

Who is @melhawk46 and What Is His Agenda?

Posted on April 15, 2018 by admin

After a brief respite to spend time with my four grandchildren, it is back to work.

In response to my last blog post, Twitter user and educator, @thenerdyteacher, reacted negatively to some of the points I made in the article. He wrote:

“If you wanted to say it was something learned at school because of the system that accepts “C” as good enough, that would be one thing. Teachers do not teach mediocrity. They push students to do their best.”

And, of course he is correct, teachers do not set a goal for their students to be mediocre. They do their best to help their students do their best, to the extent the education process allows.

It occurred to me that @thenerdyteacher had not been a part of an ongoing conversation I have been having with educators, on Twitter. Had he been involved, he would know that expressing concern that “the system accepts a C as good enough” is exactly my point; a point I have been making for over five years. I would add, “the system also accepts Ds and Fs.”

For the record, I believe teachers are unsung American heroes and that blaming them for the problems in public education is like blaming soldiers for the war they were asked to fight. The problems in public education are not the teachers, rather they are the result of an education process that has grown obsolete. The education process at work in American public schools impedes rather than enhances the ability of teachers to respond to the unique needs of their students.

Ask yourself a simple question. Did someone sit down and design the education process (the process by which we teach students in our schools, today) because it was perceived to be the best way to teach our children or, did it evolve over time?

If it evolved over time, why not reinvent the process so that it is specifically designed to provide the best way to teach our society’s children in this 21st Century? The education process is no different than any other service-delivery or production process. It is a logical construct created to produce certain outcomes. Just because the existing process has been in place for decades does not mean it cannot be changed.

In case you are wondering, I am categorically opposed to the education reform movement with its focus on “Choice.” I believe the education reform movement places the future of public education and community schools at grave risk, making it imperative that we go back to the drawing board and reinvent our obsolete education process as if the future of our society depends on it; because it does.

Charter schools are not the solution to preparing millions of American children for leading our nation through the challenges the balance of this 21st Century will present for two fundamental reasons. The first is that most charter schools rely on the same education process used in the public schools they are intended to replace and, routinely, prove incapable of outperforming those schools. Moving kids to a different building with different teachers changes nothing. Different teachers and facilities are not the solution; what matters is what we do in those buildings—what matters is how we teach.

The second reason is that simple logistics make it impossible for charter schools to fulfill their “professed” promise that they will ensure the highest possible quality of education for all children. We cannot solve the problems of millions of children with a handful of charter schools, scattered here and there, serving a few hundred students at a time. We already have school buildings in every community in the U.S., full of students, and staffed with teachers trained in our best colleges and universities. This is where the challenges lie, and it is with those same teachers and in those same buildings that they must be met.

It is my assertion that no child should be allowed to fail. Our colleague, @thenerdyteacher, commented that “Failure is good for students as they learn new things.” I choose to distinguish between failure and mistakes and I believe our colleague would concur. We all make mistakes and we all experience disappointing outcomes. These are not failures and do not become a failure until we throw up our hands in defeat and stop trying. When teachers are required, by the education process, to record an F or other low score and move a class on to the next lesson, knowing there are students who are not ready, the system is forcing them to accept failure or less than a student’s best.

For these students, this is not an isolated event rather one that will be repeated lesson after lesson, semester after semester, and year after year. The longer it goes on the more improbable the odds that these kids will ever overcome their disadvantage. Kids are learning, but they are not learning the correct lessons; they are not learning how to create success for themselves.

Teachers do their best to help kids learn from their mistakes. At the end of a lesson, teachers take as much time as they can to help students who are struggling and are not ready to move on to the next lesson, but that only works when the number of struggling students is small. When the percentage of struggling students in a teacher’s classroom grows to 25, 50, 75 percent or more, the amount of time the education process gives teachers to help these kids is insufficient. There is no policy that tells teachers not to help these students, but circumstances often make it impossible. The pressure to move kids down the path established by academic standards is relentless. This arbitrary schedule is created, not to serve the best interests of our students, but to serve organizational efficiency and administrative convenience.

None of this is the fault of public school teachers and administrators but they are the only people in a position to do anything about it.

State legislators do not understand it and the powerful forces that influence them understand it even less. If we wait for people outside the field of public education to solve the problem, nothing will happen. It is only when we accept responsibility for a problem that we begin to acquire the power to change it. It is time for public school educators to accept responsibility, not for the blame, but for finding a solution. And, yes, I understand that this is easier said than done and this is where I come in. Whether what I am offering is an end-solution or a catalyst, it has been motivated by nothing other than the interests of our nation’s children, their teachers, schools, and communities.

If they are to learn at their optimal level, what students need is an model built on the essential variables of the education equation =

Warm, nurturing relationships with teachers for a sustained period
+ they need to start with what they know
+ they need our patient attention to give them sufficient time to learn from their mistakes
+ they need to build on their successes
+ they need the support of their parents.

Garnering the support of parents is a challenge and not something over which teachers have direct control. Providing the first four of the essential variables in the education equation, however, creates the best opportunity to pull parents into the process as partners, sharing responsibility for the education of their children. Success is contagious even for those sitting on the sidelines.

The existing education process does not ensure that teachers have the time and environment to form those important, sustained relationships; it does not ensure that we begin teaching each child at the unique point on the academic preparedness continuum where we find them when they arrive at our door; it does not make giving students as much time as they need to learn from their mistakes an over-riding priority; it does not allow all students to build on their success because one cannot build on success until one begins to experience it; and, the education process does not make parental support a priority and is not designed to facilitate the formation of such relationships.

Teachers do the best they can to make these things happen despite the education process but both teachers and their students deserve more. What teachers, students, and parents deserve and what school corporations must be compelled to do is provide an education process that is designed to facilitate the education equation. They require a process that is molded around the work that teachers, students, and parents must do together, much in the way the cockpit of an airplane is molded around the needs of a pilot.

I understand that many teachers reading this post are proud of the work they have done and of the success of their students and they should be proud. It took sustained effort to achieve that success within the context of a process that does not make it easy.

What teachers across the spectrum of public education must be willing to acknowledge, however, is the process does not work for every child, for every teacher, and in every school. And, if it does not work for every child it is not good enough. Every child counts or none of them count.

What all public-school educators must do is be willing to step back and think about how you would structure the education process if you were starting from scratch. Over the past dozen years, that is what I have been doing by applying my experience working with kids, leading people and organizations, finding innovative solutions, and applying what I learned over my ten years as a substitute teacher. I simply went back to the drawing board.

It may seem arrogant to say it, but I believe everything I have done and learned over the last 50 years has prepared me for this purpose: to change the way we teach children in order to ensure that every child learns as much as they are able, at their own best pace rather than an arbitrary schedule, and are driven by their own unique interests and potential.

I ask you to take the time to think about a new model designed to support teachers and students as they go about their important work. I am also asking for help in finding at least one superintendent willing to test my model in one of his or her district’s struggling elementary schools. The outcomes in these schools have not changed in years and they are unacceptable. That means we must try something other than what we have always done. My model can be found at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/

For those who would like to have a better understanding of why I believe I am uniquely qualified to introduce a new education model, I offer the short bio, below.

After a career that included: a summer running a churchyard playground and game room on Germantown Avenue in Philadelphia, in 1966, for the purpose of keeping teens and preteens away from gang recruiters; 9 years as a juvenile probation officer working with a similar population of kids; thirty years in organizational leadership positions and as an independent consultant, I left my consulting business to pursue a lifelong dream of writing books.

During a ten-year period from 2002 through 2011, during which I wrote 3 books, I worked as a substitute teacher for my local public-school district. This was the same district my three kids had attended.

During this same period, and up to present day, I also administer the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) to potential enlistees in the Armed Services and, also, to high school students as part a Career Exploration Program developed by the U.S. Department of Defense. I have Masters’ degrees in both Education (psychology) and Public Affairs (public management).

Among my specialties as an organization executive and as a consultant had been to help organizations address their dissatisfaction with the unacceptable outcomes of their production and service-delivery processes. I did this by conducting an organizational assessment and then applying the principles of systems thinking, positive leadership, and operations management to reinvent the process to produce the desired outcomes. My work was guided by a simple axiom I have observed in operations management that:

“If a process continues to produce disappointing outcomes no matter how hard people work or how qualified they are, then the process is flawed and must be replaced or reinvented.”

In her book, The Flat World and Education: How America’s Commitment to Equity Will Determine our Future (2010) Linda Darling-Hammond made a similar point:

“A business world maxim holds that ‘every organization is perfectly structured to get the results it gets.’ A corollary is that substantially different results require organizational redesign, not just incentives for staff to try harder with traditional constraints.”

It is time to go back to the drawing board and reinvent the education process to ensure the success of every child.

What I proceeded to do, first, in my book, Reinventing Education Hope, and the American Dream: the Challenge for Twenty-first Century America (2013), and in my blog Education, Hope, and the American Dream, and through tweets and other forms of communication is clarify the mission or purpose of education; identify the key variables in the education equation; and, then design an education model that insures that every child receives the time, relationships, and support they need to learn as much as they are able, at their own best pace. No child should be pushed ahead to keep up with classmates and neither is it acceptable to ask other students to slow down and wait for classmates to catch up to them.

My book is now over five years old and I have learned a great deal since then, thanks to the many professional educators with whom I have had the opportunity to converse. I am working on an updated version to incorporate what I have learned, and to alter things I wrote, then, that I no longer believe to be true. I am striving to complete the book before the end of the summer.

In the interim, I have published an updated version of my education model and a white paper. The latter provides the logical foundation for the model and an overview of the other findings and conclusions from the book. The reader is encouraged to check out the white paper and model at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/education-model-white-paper/

My blog now has over 200 articles written about the challenges facing public education and can be accessed at https://melhawkinsandassociates.com/blog/

You are invited to share your comments and criticisms through the blog or Twitter. I also encourage you to subscribe to my blog, and to share this message with your colleagues. However well your own school may be doing, I know you all share grave concerns about schools and students that struggle and I know you are concerned about the future of community public schools. This is an opportunity to make a difference that extends beyond the walls of your classrooms and schools.