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.

A Case Against Gentle Parenting

Social media really knows how to feed me content that is click bait for tired and fed up teachers.  I understand, because there is plenty to be fed up with.  One video really got me going though and it took me back to my newest book.

First, I do acknowledge that parenting across the generations can be quite different and that we should understand this before we criticize.  However, I am not a fan of gentle parenting.  I am a fan of parent leadership.  If you want to help your child's teachers, give this a read.

I offer the following excerpt from my book about relational leadership when it comes to parenting.

So, what is my overall strategy for being a relational leader as a parent?   You may not want to hear this but here we go.  Your children are not little versions of you.  Your children are not little adults that you get to hang out with.  Your children are not meant to be the fix to all of your mistakes.  Finally, your children will someday become their own people with their own kids.  Did you prepare them for that?  As we go through mentorship, trust, and empathy I hope that I can show you that our current notions of parenthood may be hurting our kids and our relationships with them.

What do I mean by this?  Children who are gently parented (I think this is how you would say this) will negotiate with their parents over just about everything until being told no is just a suggestion.  This is evidence that negotiations regularly take place and that the parents view their child as their equal.  You cannot be a leader of your children if you do not see them as a follower.  

Let me offer another about trust through reliability.

My challenge to you parent leaders is to take an inventory of your most repeated behaviors or reactions.  What do your kids trust you to do?  My son trusted me to have a high-speed come apart.  Initially, I was upset by this, but then I took an inventory. He has had his share, albeit very few, of butt chewings.  He was my student in one of my schools for a year and he knows that I’ve had to get loud with his classmates before.  He knows I have strong opinions about law, order, and respect.  Maybe I did give him a reason to think I would yell at him.  How about you?  If you heard your child talking about you while you weren't around, what would they tell people you freak out about?  

My goal for parents is to behave in a way that their kids trust them to react to situations in a certain way.  This is a very broad spectrum.  On one side of the spectrum, can they come to you with a personal problem and they know you will be a good listener.  On the other hand, if your kid gets pulled over by the police, does he trust that you will freak out on him and punish him?  Kids who are gently parented, trust their parents will be easily manipulated and negotiated with.  If you want to help your child (and their teacher), stop negotiating and build a set of parent leadership behaviors that they will come to expect without fail.

If you would like to learn more about parent leadership, find my book on Amazon at https://a.co/d/brokSnR  It is also available on Barnes & Noble.

A Power in Purpose

If you have teacher friends complaining that the COVID babies are struggling this year, believe them.  We have spent lots of time on addressing behaviors and figuring out triggers.  It's safe to say (and I will catch some grief for this) that our little people are coming to us screen-addicted, without structure, gently parented, and without some basic soft skills.  The result is a struggle to establish these things in a classroom setting and very poor behaviors are ensuing.

A very talented teacher came to me to talk this over.  She was overwhelmed and admitted to me that she prayed very hard each night that her students would behave each day.  She then said something that I know I will never forget.  She said she felt that God spoke to her during one of her prayers and reminded her that he was sending her to them because they needed her the most.  My mind was blown.

If we are being honest, regular people often see things from a victim's mentality.  Why is this happening to me?  What did I do to deserve this?  If you are a Christian, you should not.  We often ask why bad things happen to good people.  My pastor's answer for this is that God will always remind you that you should lean on him when times are bad.  We have to trust that God is placing us in positions to execute his purpose for us.  Even if it feels ugly.  Author Jon Gordon posted a graphic once that said, "God will often make you go through a life change so you will become someone who changes lives."  This seems to be the spirit of my discussion with this teacher.

I'm not known to be outwardly religious, but I am a Red Letter Christian.  What that teacher said to me was refreshing.  It reminded me of my purpose.  I have lots of hard days and deal with many challenging situations and people.  I was reminded that God placed me there for that purpose.  Teachers, God placed you in your classrooms to serve your students.  That service is stressful and emotionally draining (preaching to the choir), but it is what Christ asks of us.  "For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many."

If you are in a classroom teaching or serving as a paraprofessional, I truly believe that you are part of the one percent of the population that can actually do this work.  Many will try to how to do your job, but you are special, so keep your head up.  God sent you to your students and your communities.  I feel a sense of honor in this work because it was a powerful purpose given to me by God.  This makes my purpose not just service to others as Christ would want, but I'm following the plan that God has for me.  Even if there are bad days.

Teacher friends, it's going to be okay.  Understand the power of your purpose and know you are important to your students and your co-workers.  If they didn't have you, who might they end up with?  Trust God's plan.

It Ain't Easy Being Purple

Your civics teacher should have taught you at some point that George Washington was not a fan of political parties.  In fact, in his farewll address, he said, " However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion."

How is it that all those years ago, he could see into the future and know what damage this would cause?  He was actually concerned about the hearts of men and what they are capable of.  He didn't need ChatGPT to get a grasp on this.

All the red state, blue state stuff is a movement away from what we are supposed to be.  A purple country.

Recently, there has been a race on both sides to redistrict congressional maps to help create red or blue states.  Some say that it's because Republicans can't win enough seats on their own.  Others say that Democrats have to play this game to win back much-needed seats.  I say both sides are trying to vote for you instead of you voting for them.  This was not the intention of the founding fathers, but rather the power grab of, see above, "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men."

I am a moderate Democrat who has voted for many Republican candidates in the past.  It's not difficult to look at your candidates and select who you think would be most effective for that particular office.  Being purple means you can dismiss the cults of personality and see your candidates and their views for what they actually are.

It ain't easy being purple these days.  Those cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men know how to separate us and convince us that government isn't about actually governing, but about whose ideas make you the most angry.

Government was meant to work for the people.  Government is about service, and if the shutdown fiasco is teaching us anything, it's that we, the people, are no longer part of the equation.  If we want to be the change, we have to think purple in the voting booth.  It's the only way to send the message.  Being purple means we can take the best parts from both sides and select politicians who will do the same for us when they are in office.

I know this means having to admit that the other side might be right sometimes, and that will be hard for many.  But it also means that we are capable of electing people who are willing to serve.  This is what Washington and our other founding fathers were after all those years ago.

Failing Forward

 

This was the scene at a local library not too long ago.  I was asked to come and promote my new book, Nine Ways to Make Awesome Kids.  I had visited this library for a similar event for my first book.  It was well attended and generated some great conversation.  For this one, no one showed.

This is not the only failure I'm realizing with this project.  To date, it has only sold three copies on Amazon and zero copies on Barnes & Noble.  I have given away ten copies.  The Facebook page I created to stimulate conversation around the book was shuttered very quickly due to low participation, despite paying for boosts and ads.  I even created a wide variety of Reels to share on Instagram and Facebook.  My hopes of creating a podcast around the book also faded when I could not find a suitable co-host.  The gears just never got turning.

I might accept these failures, but I am not happy with them.  I had two offers to publish this book, but I declined them because I did not want to pay a share of the investment to get it off the ground.  Maybe I should have, but I wanted to keep full control of my work.  So why am I telling you this?

Writing a book is hard folks.  When you have something to say and start outlining a project, you go into a strange state of flow that you never experienced when being forced to write in high school or college.  You know, back when you desperately just tried to get to the word count for a paper.  This is different.  You might take an hour to write one sentence or spend an hour writing ten pages.  It's hard to explain the self doubt you may have over one single line but you will stare at it endlessly until it makes sense.  

There is really no money in this, unless you write for a living.  I do not, but I feel I have a set of experiences and a perspective that I think people might want to read about.  So when I see that the book is not selling, I am only discouraged that the message I'm sending is not being received.  You want the work you put in to be read and taken to task.  This is how ideas are exchanged and new ideas take hold.  I truly feel Nine Ways has a place in our current state of parenting and teaching.  Not everyone feels the same it seems.

I've already been asked if I plan on writing another book.  My response is that I am not even thinking about it.  To many, it seems like writing a book is like running a marathon.  Once it's done, it is done and then you stand back and say, "Look what I did."  This is not the case for authors.  You want the work to be read and to endure and when it's not, you can't help breaking it down and being critical of yourself.

Failure is part of this game and I will lick my wounds and go on.  The idea is to always fail forward towards something better and I will keep trying to do that.  The good news is that I have a day job to fall back on.

You can purchase Nine Ways at https://a.co/d/8MwyWaS

You can purchase Leaving Poverty at https://a.co/d/bfxuWb3

Rage Sells Thanks to Section 230

 I taught high school civics many moons ago and with out sounding too grandiose, it was one of the best parts of my professional life.  Kids come in with a notion of our freedoms that is inspiring, but you have to help them pump the brakes and learn the rules.  This is especially true with the freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech is back in the headlines after the high profile murder of Charlie Kirk.  With the Trump administration on high alert, they have taken aim at journalists and network news.  People on both sides are fired up and making every attempt to blame the other.  If I'm being honest, both sides share blame for the direction of political discourse in our country.  The cynic in me would like to point out that politicians are part of a larger brand (Democrat or Republican) and not service oriented as we elect them to be.  This is why we see them voting party lines, even at the local level.  They have to maintain the brand so they can keep base voters.  To keep base voters, they must rely on their coverage in the media and what kind of engagement they get online just as if they were selling a product.

This I where I want to jump in.  Our lives online have gotten out of control.  Professor Scott Galloway recently said that sex no longer sells. Rage is now how you get engagement with a brand.  A great micro example is the Sydney Sweeney controversy with her jeans ad.  The ads were not revealing by today's standards, but revealing that she is a Republican was troubling for many for some strange reason.  The play book is that if you can gin up enough outrage, people will follow you.  The problem with this is that we re hurting ourselves and each other because of it.

How many of you have heard of Section 230 of the Communications Act?  It may not be important to you, but it is wildly important to social media companies.  The law and subsequent court decisions holds that the social media company is not liable for content that is published by its users.  It only says they have to make good faith effort to moderate.  As we know, moderation is often left to the users and this is not a workable system for those who lack self control.

When I left Twitter, their in-app moderation tools were failing and I was continually getting hateful content that I was trying to eliminate from my feed.  I leave and move to Treads where I was inundated right away with content about how bad teachers are and why everyone should be homeschooled.  Rage does indeed sell.  The engagement on these posts was astonishing.  I have never really been able to produce that kind of engagement on my own by sending positive vibes.

If we want to make a difference for ourselves and our children in the area of free speech, we have to take a bigger look at Section 230 and why it needs to go away.  While politicians are pointing fingers to protect their voting base, a young man is being radicalized online and planning a violent act against someone or themselves.  This is what we have learned from recent mass shootings and high profile murders.  The shooters political ideologies are not solid, but they were all radicalized against their targets on social media or in the gaming world.  Why would we not eliminate Section 230 and spare ourselves from this?

This also requires effort on our part.  If rage sells, we have to stop participating.  The social media companies make money hand over fist because we allow it.  This is why 230 has no chance of going away.  The ad money they make from us goes to lobbyists to protect the company's interest.  We have a part to play to protect ourselves and the mental health of our children.  What is stopping us?

There's a saying that your rights end where the next man's nose begins.  When it comes to free speech, the next man's nose is very bloody right now and no one should not be okay with it.  Take a look at your own behavior, the content your kids are consuming, and be vocal about the things that matter most.  Not the protection of your feelings, but the hate we let in as we mindlessly scroll social media.  We have to take control over this.  Eliminating 230 is only a start, we have to do the rest.