Today’s Weekend Words post comes once again from my friend Joe Caufield, an English teacher at Blake High School in Montgomery County. Joe previously wrote the post titled “Marv Levy No More.”
My favorite English professor in college once mentioned to me that he thought that the two most ridiculous figures in the world are the Young Conservative and the Old Radical. One of my dearest friends, Jimmy Lopez -now 67 years old- fits the latter description. While his politics and mine may be miles apart, I do admire a person who adheres to his principles. In particular, I like one of the concepts he imparted when he was a young activist.
Jimmy spent two decades of his life working with young people as a community organizer in the barrios of Denver and Los Angeles. The thing that he stressed to kids more than anything else was that education was the key to their success. He located resources for his protégés, he pressured politicians, and he begged benefactors. Ultimately, however, many of his prospects needed to take out student loans themselves if they were going to complete college. Some balked at the financial risk and liability the loans entailed, but Jimmy would tell them, “C’mon, Ese, you gotta be willing to bet on yourself. If you’re not, who else will be?”
This formulation has led me to think about the practices of most successful people. They take risks and they make sacrifices because they are willing to “bet” on themselves.
In my last piece, I crowed about how our Blake team won the Metro It’s Academic championship and the larger It’s Academic Super Bowl. I didn’t mention the dark cloud that hung season-long over the horizon of our ultimate goal. The championship game was scheduled for the morning after our school prom and after-prom – an elaborate, year-defining extravaganza that lasts until 5am. The kids periodically complained to me and my fellow coach Kevin Keegan about this conflict, and we would answer with the cliché that we would “cross that bridge when we came to it.” On May 5 -five days before prom- we reached that bridge, when we earned a berth in the title game with a decisive win in the semifinal round. Over the weekend Keegan and I phoned each other and tag-teamed over what we should say to the players at the team meeting we were having on Monday.
Keegan usually takes care of the pep talks, prep talks, and general come-to-Jesus talks with the kids because he has a way of speaking with a force, a directness, and a clarity that I would be hard-pressed to match. His talk went roughly like this:
“I have coached teams in nine Metro title games, and those teams have come in first three times, second three times, and third three times. The three third-place finishes were by teams that went to prom the night before, and they all finished third by embarrassingly large margins. You guys want to stay out at the after-prom all night. You also want to win the Metro title. You think you can have both, but you cannot have both. You need to go home and talk to your parents, and you need to talk to your dates. If you decide that you want to stay out all night, we will suspend practice for the rest of the week, and we will meet you at the studio on Saturday; otherwise, we will practice tomorrow and the rest of the week. Just to re-cap, you can stay out at the after prom all night-that is a sure thing. If you do that, it is an equally sure thing that you will lose in the finals. You can go to be at a decent hour, and possibly win the Metro title game. In fairness, it is possible that you could sacrifice the after-prom and still lose in the finals.”
At that point, with Jimmy’s favorite phrase echoing in the hollows of my head, I piped in, “It all depends on whether or not you’re willing to bet on yourselves.”
Long story short: they gave up the after-prom, and they won the championship. I hope that it is an accomplishment that they will remember fondly for a long time. More importantly, I hope that the experience will make them more eager to ante up when, in the future, the opportunity to bet on themselves presents itself.
Have a great weekend,
Ro
Joe Caulfield has taught high school English for 20 years, the last 15 at Blake High School in Montgomery County. He is paid by direct deposit and enjoys his daily work so much that he likes to pretend that he is really a trust fund baby who can do whatever he wants. In 2009, he
received the first-ever Sophie Altman Memorial Award for the Outstanding It’s Academic Coach in the Washington Area. In the 15 years his Blake team has participated on the televised game show, it has made the championship finals more than five times. This year, for the first time, Joe’s team finally won the championship. Joe used to refer to himself as the “Marv Levy of It’s Academic coaches,” but he’s going to have to find a new nickname now.