Cardboard Nostalgia

Like most people, I need a way to disconnect and give my brain and emotions some rest from my work.  Collecting cards again has become a form of therapy for me.  As a Gen Xer, I prefer the "old" stuff called Junk Wax.  It's not worth anything; it's very cheap, but the walk down memory lane is quite soothing.  I kept a large part of my childhood collection and have been adding to it with the cards I never had, which has become a lot of fun.

As I have reconnected with cards, I have been consuming social media groups and content to find some community with others like me.  Once I found it, I started posting shorts on YouTube.  A YouTube channel is a way to share this and be a part of the community.  Posting pack opening videos has been a lot of fun and a place where I do not see the ugliness from other parts of the internet.

Some creators do very well with engagement on these videos.  Personally, if I get 1,000 views per video, I'm pretty happy about it.  That tells me people are enjoying the same getaway that I am, with cards they are familiar with.  It's very rewarding.

A few months ago, I came across a pack of 1988 Donruss with Mark McGwire visible on the front of it.  I really wanted to keep it as a fun souvenir, but I also really wanted to open it. I polled the collectors of the internet, and they said to go ahead and open it because it is worthless.  😒 I held it for a while, but I eventually caved in and made a video of opening the pack.

1988 Donruss is a wildly unvaluable card set.  Some actually think the card design is ugly (it kinda is), and despite a few good cards, it is forgotten about until you post a video bringing it to life.  This one became one of my more popular videos because we all remember being kids and racing to a card shop or store to get a pack of cards for 40 cents.  Hoping desperately to find our favorite players inside.  This was how I connected with baseball when there was no internet.  You had the stats on the back of the card and the box score in the paper.

I think older people like old junk.  It reminds them of simpler times, good friends, and a time when the responsibility of adulthood was far from their minds.  Nostalgia can definitely be found on some cardboard.  Take some time to get your fix however you like.

You can see this video and many others at my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@cassripspacks/shorts

A Lesson in Gratitude

I found myself caught off guard with a staff member recently, and I feel I need to explain myself.

At a training for my staff, our participants were asked to cross the room and ask someone what they are grateful for.  Showing gratitude has proven to be very good for your emotional health, and while this may make people uncomfortable, it is a worthwhile task.  I was visited by a teacher despite my being a facilitator.  I guess she didn't want me to feel left out.

She asked what I was grateful for.  This was an easy one.  I am thankful for my children.  Both are ending stages of their lives and starting new ones.  We feel fortunate to be blessed with our kids, even if they drive us nuts sometimes.  She followed up with what I was grateful for when it came to work.  This is where I faltered, and I could not answer confidently.

It's not as if I cannot find anything about my job or coworkers that I am not thankful for.  I have great students, accomplished teachers, and a cooperative school board, and we are pursuing goals that the district has not been able to reach in several years.  By all accounts, we are in great shape.  What I tried to explain in the 30 seconds the presenter gave us was that this line of work is difficult to stand back and admire your work and blessings.  Why?

The work of school is what Simon Sinek calls an infinite game.  A finite game has a defined start and end, like a football game or other contest.  When it is done, there is a winner and a loser, and the events of the game can be broken down and analyzed.  Infinite games are those that do not end, and the goal is to stay in the game as long as possible, building on every success.  People who work in schools understand that there are no finish lines, and even if you do well with a class, another one is waiting for you in the fall.  There will always be children to teach.  The goals of school districts and buildings are the same.  If you are doing the work well, you finish one project to feed the next, and so on.  Just as there are always kids to teach, they have to have facilities to come to.

I couldn't identify what I was grateful for immediately because that required being done and being able to reflect on how I got there.  When you are never finished, you can't do that.  I felt a bit of shame in my response to the teacher because I came off as unappreciative.  This is far from the case.  Agency is in the greatness of others, and all that our little school has accomplished is thanks to the work and patience of those who help me.

I think the lesson for me is that even if I never feel finished, I can appreciate all the steps along the way.  Lesson learned.  Showing gratitude can help me celebrate what is happening right now.  I feel that I need to make amends with my teacher by giving her a real answer.

I'm grateful for:

• Every high five, hug, or "good morning" my staff gives each kid when they walk in.
• All the training and professional growth my staff experiences every year.
• Every pair of shoes that we give to kids that either don't have any or have broken ones.
• "No questions asked" meals for kids who have nothing in their lunch boxes.
• All the behaviors we teach instead of punishing.
• All the sick days staff donate to other staff in need.
• Every time a teacher is moved to tears by a student's progress.

I hope this small list is a good start, and I will do better at recognizing my blessings.

We Can All Do Better for the Homeless

Recently, I stopped at a local gas station to fill up and get a soda.  It was a brisk 19 degrees outside when I arrived there at about 7:30 AM.  I went inside to the soda fountain and heard a strange commotion from the back room, where the door to the bathroom was.  I heard a woman declaring loudly that "this is not a halfway house or shelter."  Her comments were met with silence.  She was not in my line of sight, and I just assumed she was on the phone with someone.  Moments later, a man arose from the area, and I could determine that she was talking to him, and she was possibly the manager on shift.

By anyone's account, he was homeless.  He was wearing dirty, mismatched clothes, his physical appearance was not clean, and he was covering his head with an old, dirty blanket.  He was carrying a plastic bag and a gallon of milk.  

She continued to direct him out the door and began to shout while holding her cell phone in her hand.  She informed him that he was tresspassed from the store and that he could not use their bathroom to sleep.  From all of the back and forth between the clerk and the manager, I could determine that he snuck into the bathroom and had been sleeping in there for two hours.  The man never spoke, and it was obvious that he was ashamed and beaten down by the interaction. He left without any fuss and stood outside to determine his next move.

I understand the business's position on catching someone sleeping in their bathroom;  but there is always a place for dignity and decency for the homeless.  I minded my own business as I listened for any sign of compassion from the woman.  It never came.  I felt like she could have been less abrasive.  I felt like she could have offered to call someone for him.  I felt like she could have shown some kind of empathy.

What did I do?  I did nothing.  I paid for my drink and left.  He was still standing outside as I drove off.  I did none of the things that I thought the store manager should have done.  I have written and spoken extensively about poverty and how we can help the poor, but I have no personal experience with homelessness.  I don't know what to do or how to do it.  Just as he was ashamed, so was I.

My uneducated, narrow view of homelessness is this.  If a man or woman is reduced to sleeping on the street or in a gas station bathroom, every single support system that person depends on has failed in some way. This could be family, friends, social services, etc.  I get irritated when I hear someone say that homeless people should just get a job, as if that is the magic bullet to prosperity.  It is not, but it is a good start.  Entry-level jobs and blue-collar work that require no experience or training do not even provide a basic standard of living, even if you work full-time.  Many people doing this type of work still need SNAP and Medicaid to get by and raise their families.  Homeless people need much more than work.  They need belonging and a renewed sense of self.

I preach about leadership, but I showed none in this situation.  Leadership is only present when action is taken.  I kept my head down.  This is a violation of what I believe and of my faith.  I have no idea what I could have done or what was appropriate to do.  I just know I was another person not helping.

I want to take this opportunity to shout out to the non-profits that are taking action and making a difference, most notably, the West Frankfort Coalition for the Homeless.  This group is a task force seeking to find the causes of homelessness in the West Frankfort community and how to provide services to prevent homelessness.  Action is leadership, and I'm thankful for people working on these issues, even if I am not equipped to.  Keep up the good work, and I will do better.

The Forgotten Player

For school admins who work in secondary schools, this time of year is very busy. We have lots of ball games and events to supervise and for myself, I have a senior son playing basketball. I’m not complaining by any means. I love to watch the games and root for my kid and my students.

What I also find myself doing is watching and learning from coaches. A lot of different styles and philosophies walk through the doors and sometimes I am fascinated and sometimes I wonder how did that clown get a coaching job. There was a time when I was one of those clowns trying to get it all figured out. When I wrote Nine Ways to Make Awesome Kids, I devoted a chapter to coaching leadership and shared a story of the time I forgot a player. I’m not proud of it, but it is a good lesson. Here is that part of the chapter.

I was lucky enough to be hired as an assistant girls basketball coach in a neighboring school district when I was teaching. I say lucky because I had no reason being there. My skills at coaching softball were adequate, but basketball was not something I felt I could coach well. I was paired with a very knowledgeable head coach and my plan was to use my rapport with kids and what I would learn from her to get to the same adequacy level in basketball. Halfway through the season, this plan was working and I managed not to embarrass myself on a regular basis, just every once in a while.

What you should know about this particular group of kids is that the program was rebuilding and only twelve girls showed up to play. Seven of them were freshmen and only one senior. This is not a recipe for success at the high school level and it was quite a challenge for scheduling. Nevertheless, we kept a full junior varsity schedule and played a full varsity schedule with this small but dedicated group of young ladies. We even snuck in a couple of freshman games. We wanted to make sure this group of girls stayed together until the end, so we made sure to have opportunities for them to play together.

We chose two interesting opponents for these games. One was with a school much larger than us who we managed to beat. The other had a long winning tradition and we were very outmatched in talent and in numbers. Our kids were a little intimidated. The game was a back and forth affair with our girls stepping up to the challenge. It was probably the most aggressive I had been as a basketball coach to that point. With only seven girls, we had to play clean and be efficient with our possessions. With the game coming down to the wire, we were able to pull out a win. It felt like a big deal. So much so that their coach even chewed on me for bringing three varsity started to a freshman game. We could not help this with only seven freshman in the program. Their coach did not want to hear it and walked off from me. Coaching drama aside, our players and parents were riding on cloud nine. It was a glimpse into what this group of girls could be and it was exciting.

I always sat in the front of the bus so the girls could sing loudly and act silly on the rides home. This particular trip was different. Once we were on the road for a bit, the girls were all quiet except for one. I could hear her crying and it sounded as if she was talking to someone on the phone. Without making a scene, I tried to listen in and see who it was that was upset. Once I figured it out, I realized that out of my seven players tonight she did not play a single minute. I never put her in.

She was on the phone with her mom and when I stepped off the bus, mom let me have it. I deserved every second of it. No amount or style of apology was good enough for the conversation and I am completely to blame. I had no good excuse for this. This kid was a model teammate. While she was not as talented as the others, she was a hard worker and bought in to everything we were doing with the program. I didn’t keep her from playing, I just forgot about her. I was so busy trying to win a tough game (and help my credibility) that I forgot why we scheduled those freshmen games in the first place. It was for the development of that class of girls. I had failed the team and especially this kid miserably.

My job was to help make this group better. And by not playing this young lady, I did not help her get better as an individual player. I was more concerned about my interests. This is the opposite of a servant leader and I learned a valuable coaching lesson that night. I spent the rest of the season trying to repair what I had done to this kid. She returned the next season, but I did not. My first responsibility to my school district was softball and even though basketball is a winter sport, it was getting in the way of our activities. I resigned from that position, but I gained so much in that one season. Coaches, if you are a true servant leader, you will learn as much from your players as they learn from you. Read that again, twice. Remember, it’s not about you, it’s about the future you create for your players. They may not all become Division One athletes, but they all can become servant leaders just like you.

You can purchase Nine Ways on Amazon and Barnes & Noble online.

Some Notes on Commencement

I recently had the pleasure of attending my daughter's college graduation.  We are now alumni of the same university.  Although I used to joke that she needed to attend Southern Illinois University at Carbondale to get the legacy tuition rate, the reality is that I am a proud graduate of SIUC and proud to be the father of a graduate of SIUC.  We both graduated from the College of Education, and she is ready to take on the world.

During commencement, the Chancellor asked all the first-generation college students to stand up.  These are the kids who are the first in their families to graduate.  Nearly half of the undergrads stood up.  I felt pride once more.  I was a first-gen student.  Back then, we were known as non-traditional college students.  I knew I would be standing proudly if it were my graduation, but I was secretly happy that my daughter did not have to stand for her's.

In my book, Leaving Poverty, I wrote a whole chapter about what college meant for me and how it was the single biggest factor in my social mobility.  Had I not finished college, statistically, neither would she.  I remember my wife and I showing her around the campus before she started.  I loved being a helping hand and passing down what I had learned to my second-generation college student.  She was already ahead of me at this same point in time, and this is what all fathers wish to see.

Despite the amount of pride I feel for her and what she is doing, I know that our pathways to college graduation were very different.  As a middle-class kid, my hope is that she sees her degree as important as I did coming from poverty.  My advice to her was very simple.

• No one can take your degree away from you.  You have earned all its rights and privileges.
• A degree can define you for life.  Even if you become a U.S. senator, you will still be a teacher by trade.  They will just insert the phrase "former teacher" in the captions on the news.
• Never view it as a piece of paper or simply a checklist item to become a teacher.  The degree represents the work and preparation needed to be a teacher.  You are now well-prepared to obtain your license and get to work.

None of that may seem earth-shattering, but any time I hear Go Southern Go, I feel pride in my institution and the life it has provided me by earning a degree.  I want her to feel the same pride, no matter where life takes her.  She may not be elected to the Senate, but she will be asked someday what it takes to be a teacher by an aspiring young person.  She will have to speak of her college experience before all other things.  I hope she has the same enthusiasm as I do.

A Tale of Two Threads

Let me be clear, I am a total nobody on Threads.  I have 76 followers, and that hardly makes me an influencer.  Recently, I had a moment that confirms how I feel about social media and the idea that the algorithms love division.

I jumped out of character and made a rare ornery post about a political commentator that I do not care for.  You can see the post and the engagement that I got in this screenshot.  The likes were staggering, and the comments were too much to keep up with.  Not bad for a guy with 76 followers.

With my newfound swag, I posted a fun little picture a couple of days later.  Crickets.  The last time I checked, this post had two views.  A far cry from going viral as I did a few days prior.

While this is a very small sample size for this little experiment, it reinforces something we all know, but do not always want to admit.  We just keep scrolling into this stuff.  I hate when I get this kind of content in my feed, so I feel a little bad that I did this for others.   

Social media elevates content that makes us mad or triggers us.  A podcaster I listen to accurately opines that sex no longer sells.  Rage does.  We all know it, and we all know it is bad for us and our relationships with others.  It has strained the discourse in the country dramatically.

What can we do?  Individually, not much, but collectively, we have to change our social media habits.  This is the only way to redirect the algorithms.  I know this is a hard sell, but we have to get out of the mess the same way we got into it.  You know, overconsuming the content that grinds our gears.

When I speak to my junior high students about online and social media safety, I tell them to create a new rule for themselves.  Use your socials for celebrations.  I show them screenshots of mine saying kind things about others or congratulating people I know.  Obviously, I will not be showing them the Scott Jennings post, but you get my drift.

Now is the time, my friends.  Let's change the way we social.

Accountability is Love

In nearly 25 years of working with kids, I've learned that they see the idea of accountability differently than we do.  When we ask someone to be accountable for their actions, we are asking them to take responsibility, be able to answer for themselves, and to accept some measure of disciplinary consequence.  Adults see this as necessary, and kids see this as torture.

Last year, I sat down with two fourth graders whom I had really taken a liking to.  Both are charismatic, forward with people, and very effective communicators.  I can see them being incredible young men by the time they get to high school.  Unfortunately, they were not using these powers for good.  They soon discovered that their skill sets could be used to enable others to act poorly.  They were not leading in a good sense.  They were leading others to entertain them.

One day during lunch, I had scolded them several times for their behavior.  Frustrated with myself, I held them afterwards to talk it over.  They asked why I was singling them out all the time.  They were shocked to hear me admit that I was.  I told them that I could see them becoming something special one day.  Because of this, I would be watching their every move, getting on to them, coaching them, and mentoring them.  I also told them that they had no say in the matter.  They accepted my position, and behaviors were fewer for the rest of the year.  This year, as fifth graders, they are slowly becoming what I had hoped for them, and our relationships are better.

When I wrote Nine Ways, I really needed parents, teachers, and coaches to understand that establishing trust through reliability meant that our kids needed to expect us to be their guardrails.  They should expect us to have a standard of conduct that reflects our values.  Their behaviors should reflect what we stand for.  When they don't, we need to look in the mirror.  Our kids are not tiny adults with adult capacity for decision-making.  We have to take action to get them there.

Unfortunately, over this same span of time, parents increasingly seem to see accountability as an uncomfortable exercise for themselves, but somehow really hate it when others do it for them.  Parents, let me hit you with a truth bomb.  Accountability is love.  When you hold your kids accountable for their behavior, you are showing them love.  When their teachers and coaches do it, they are showing their kids love.  Even if you disagree with an outcome, you have to recognize this simple truth.

Kids stop growing when adults stop trying.  Accountability isn't just love; it is essential.  As adults, we cannot fail at this.  We will create a generation of new adults who may disregard it altogether.  This is not good.

If we love our kids and value what they can become, we will practice accountability with them.