Don Meyer

This man was our presenter on Tuesday.




I thought his speech was excellent. He had a very quiet presentation style and his humor was quite understated and dry. I'm not sure the students got all of his jokes (he joked about having to cross some of them off his list because of the reactions), but I thought he had an excellent blend of just enough humor and just enough message.

His message?

Well, it ended up echoing much of what I stress in my classes, especially my college level ones.

Meyer shared his 5 C's for success.

Concentration - if you can concentrate and focus - especially when distractions surround you - you are going to succeed. How true. And I hammer this home with my millennials all the time. How many paragraphs can they write or how many pages can they read before straying to Facebook or checking their cell phones?

Courtesy - treat people well. You never know where it will lead you or when it will come up to cost you. Coach Meyer shared a great story about the first McDonalds. On a Saturday, they ran out of pop. So the manager called up the local Pepsi distributor to order more. The distributor was rude and declared that they weren't going to deliver any pop on a Saturday. It didn't take long for McDonalds to switch to Coke products. Nor did it take long for McDonalds to explode. Think how much money being rude cost Pepsi.

What a great lesson for young people to learn. Kindness and grace never hurt anyone. The morons working the desk at the TRF hospital can learn a thing or two from that.

Communication - you can't land a job by texting nor can you land one via Facebook. Ultimately, your success depends on dealing with real, flesh and blood humans and impressing them with your skills. Because of their digital media, kids - I believe - are losing out on chances to communicate one on one with people, especially their elders.

After hearing this, I thought of an assignment one of the presenters shared from his session the day before. In his geography class, he always had his students go through an exit interview. They sat down with a member of the public and shared what they learned about the geography. I thought that was brilliant. In fact, the presenter said students would come back and thank him for that opportunity because it really prepared them for the real world. I'm going to conclude my College Comp II class with the same assignment.

Competition - you don't improve if you're never challenged; you don't grow if you are given everything. Competition can be good, but it can be terrible too. I tend to side with Alfie Kohn more on this issue. You simply can't turn everything into a competition. But pushing yourself, which is what competition is all about, is sorely missing from our schools. In schools I see competition as worrying too much about what others are doing and not enough about what you are doing.

The final C was for consistency - again, how often can you do something and do it well? How often can you consistently conceptrate, be courteous, communicate, and handle comptetition? Again, this is something I stress in my class. Can you consistently attend? Contribute to class? Get engaged in what we're studying? Challenge me and yourself? And ultimately perform and perform well?

Anyone can have a day where they feel like showing off or impressing others or giving their all, but can you do it day in and day out.

This reminds me of a colleague who does a great job with differentiated instruction and getting her kids to pass the high stakes tests. One of her student's showed marked improvement on one of the tests. Instead of taking pride in becoming more consistent, he copped out instead and said, "Well, I didn't try the first time I was tested."

What a cop out! And what an insult to the teacher who worked so hard to help get the students to show improvement and to get them up to grade level!

Yet, that is often the attitude of some of the slackers in our culture (and it probably always has been that way). I only succeed when I choose too (and one must ask then, why don't you choose to succeed more often?) and I deserve all the credit. I saw a T-shirt on a freshman once that summed this up - "Genius at birth; slacker by choice."

Then Meyer talked about the importance of doing what you are passionate about and doing what you love. As a Ken Robinson fan, I was all over that.

Meyer did a great job. He let his personality and beliefs filter through. And even though we are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, I kind of liked that he didn't hide his biases. I liked that he let his personality show.

We don't have to agree with everything he said. That's good. It certainly made for some good discussions with my classes and colleagues.

The only thing I felt funny about was how Meyer chose to conclude his presentation, by talking about the Bible and how Lord Jesus was the answer.

I believe this. I'm a Christian. But I just got an uneasy feeling about saying that in a school with an incredibly diverse student body.

And the reason I got that feeling is because I just imagined for a second what it would be like for a scientist to give a presentation and then conclude by encouraging everyone to be atheists. Or if a Muslim presented and told us all Allah was the answer and we need to read the Qur'an. Or if a Jewish presenter told us to read the Torah.

I think there is a way to work around these issues. A couple of my favorite things to study are "Young Goodman Brown" in American Lit and the Reformation in Brit Lit. Both of those are heavily influenced by religion, but there is a way to present religion without preaching. That didn't happen on Tuesday, though.