On Bucking Broncos and Fences

I like asking people "set-up" questions to see how they respond. On the occasion of his golden anniversary, I asked my grandfather the “secret” of a successful marriage. Without missing a beat he said: “Well, I’ve got that all figured out. You see, I made a pact with your grandmother when we first got married that she’d make all the little decisions, and I’d make all the big ones. That has kept the peace between us for 50 years, and I recommend that arrangement to you.” “Of course,” he whispered to me, smiling, “ I’m still waiting to make my first big decision.”

Similarly, on the occasion of her last child to graduate from our school, I jokingly asked a mother the “secret” of raising teenagers. She paused for a moment, then said, quite seriously: “Teenagers are like bucking broncos. If you ride them, their natural instinct is to buck you. Our job as parents, then, is to build fences that lead them in the direction they need to go, so that they think they’re going there of their own accord.”

I consider this mother’s remark the single wisest comment I’ve heard about teenagers in the 22 years I’ve worked with high school students as a teacher, principal or president.

Our tendency as parents is to micro-manage every aspect of our kids’ lives, and however well this works when our children are younger, it is a certain recipe for fruitless conflict as our children become teenagers. When my 15 year old brought home a mediocre report card recently, my knee-jerk response was to set up a rigid schedule at night for homework, with a defined starting and ending time, and with me as “inspector general” , scrutinizing the quality of the work that was done. We battled every night. After a few miserable weeks, the quality had not improved, nor did he seem any more an “owner” of his education than when we started. So I changed tactics, telling my son I expected at least an hour of homework each night before his 10:30 p.m. bedtime, that I would not check it for quality, but I would ask his teachers at the end of each week how he was doing. If I received a favorable report, we could continue with this arrangement and all would be well. If not, he was on complete restriction ( including no cell phone) until the end of the following week, when I’d ask the teachers again. This plan worked much better—he appreciated the “freedom” to schedule his homework around a couple of television shows he wanted to watch, his father wasn’t looking over his shoulder every night, and he had no intention of losing his cell phone (cell phones were once described by an exasperated parent as the “teenage umbilical cord”). I had learned to build fences.

What about the weekends?

I have three teenage children, and my 12 year old is showing signs. Rather than try and choose their friends, or know precisely what they are doing every minute they’re out at night, or “ping” my kids to death by calling them every 30 minutes on the cell phone, my wife and I have learned to keep things simple with three rules:

First, they can go out on Friday and Saturday nights until curfew time (midnight for our 12th grader, 11 for our freshman) but they can’t spend the night at someone else’s house, so we tell them not to bother asking. They ask anyway (being teenagers) but then grudgingly accept the rule as a given. My experience as principal is that almost all of the time, kids get into trouble on weekends when they are spending the night with other teens, and thus do not feel accountable to their parents.

Second, to increase that feeling of accountability, they must talk with me when they get home (yes, that means I must be awake to do so). This gives them the “excuse” they may need to say no to drinking, ala “You don’t know my crazy dad. He actually inspects me when I come home….”

Third, especially with my daughter, she must call us when she arrives and when she leaves a destination, so we know she got there safely or should be arriving home within a certain time. We live in a world where safety matters.

Of course, going out at all is contingent on meeting their classroom and family responsibilities that week. If they do so, they have relative “freedom” during the weekend.

I won’t lie: It sounds cleaner and easier in an essay than it does in real life! We often don't get it right. We get angry and jump on the bronco and ride it for a while, however much we foreswear this as right. Too, we may build fences, but they’re often flimsy things in need of mending (and teens are excellent at spotting where the fence is weakest!). Parenting is trial and error (and error, and error), but I believe we approach things right if we take that mother’s advice. May we all become good fence-builders!

Rome!

Diane and I spent Christmas in Rome. It was our first visit to the city and to St. Peter’s square and basilica.

Overwhelmed.

That is the best way to describe my first impression as I walked into the square and then into the basilica. Many of western civilization's most talented artists, sculptors and architects—from Michelangelo to Bernini to Raphael—have given the best years of their lives to contribute to the beauty that permeates everything here. The results are astonishing and awe-inspiring.

Proud.

That was my next feeling—that I belong to a Church that awakens in these great artists such passion and desire to glorify God, as is evident in every pillar, mosaic and delicate stroke of the brush. Surely there must be profound truth to a faith that inspires such genius.

Connected.

In the middle of St. Peter’s square is an obelisk that dates to the Egyptian empire, brought to Rome by the emperor Caligula in 37 A.D. During the reign of Nero, it served as a marker for charioteers to make the turn as part of Nero’s Circus. It was also, then, the silent witness to the merciless persecution of Christians under Nero—Peter himself was crucified upside down nearby. As I stood underneath the shadow of this obelisk, I was swept up by emotion, feeling the connection with the early Church and all of its martyrs.

During the rest of the week we were in Rome, we visited St. Peter’s square every day. Each time, it was a religious experience for us. My thanks to the Catholic community of Montgomery and to Fr. Dean in particular for this great gift.

Shula's Firing and Reflections on Coaching in Catholic Schools

In our state, when a coach at Auburn or Alabama gets fired, it’s big news. The story “broke” at 12:13 a.m. two days ago that Mike Shula, head coach at Alabama, had been fired. By 12:45 a.m., all the state’s newspapers were frantically trying to include the news for their morning editions. And so goes the coaching carousel at Alabama in the illusory search for the next Bear Bryant.

Still, the news is further evidence of what matters in big-time athletics in our country. Shula inherited a program on probation because coaches and boosters cheated by offering money to recruits. During Shula’s short stint, there was no hint of any such scandal, and everyone praised him, including the athletic director who fired him, for running the program with integrity. But of course, this didn’t matter as much as Shula’s mediocre 6-6 record this year, or the fact that Alabama has lost to cross state rival Auburn for five years in a row. It’s a cliché, but winning is what matters, pure and simple.

What about in high school programs? What about in Catholic high school programs? What role should “winning” play in a school’s decision to retain its coaches? Idealists may claim that it should not be a factor, but I think, frankly, that school leaders who put winning as a low priority are being naïve: our communities want programs which are competitive, and they expect a coach to build that within their respective teams. An expectation of excellence ought to pervade every feature of a school’s program, whether it’s the performance of A.P. Physics students on the A.P. exam, Band performances in regional and state band competitions, or athletic teams on the playing fields.

How Catholic schools contextualize these expectations, however, makes all the difference. I believe that our schools ought to expect four fundamental things from its coaches, and on these four bases, I believe coaches in a Catholic school are appropriately judged:

First, do they advance the mission of the Catholic school? Coaches, like teachers, principals and staff members, are co-educators, and our common goal is to build students of faith, virtue and wisdom. Athletics in particular can be a powerful “classroom” for teaching virtue: putting team first, striving to be the best, handling winning and losing with grace, handling pressure, to mention only a few. In this context, trying to win can be embraced, for when teams are competitive, coaches can demand more of student athletes and push them harder to sacrifice themselves for team goals. As an example, excellent off season weight-lifting and conditioning programs typical of first rate programs teach athletes to delay gratification, something our culture doesn’t otherwise promote! So winning, then, becomes a means, and not the end, of an athletic program. Coaches should be expected, in their deportment, goal setting and leadership of young men and women, to advance the school’s mission.

Second, though winning is a worthy goal of every coach within this context, the reality is that some years, the athletes just aren’t there to produce lofty won-loss records. Improvement, then, becomes the standard by which a coach ought to be judged. Are the players getting better, both in terms of their individual abilities and in terms of their working together as a team? When coaches do a good job improving their teams, even during the “off-years”, the wild swings between teams being 10-1 one year and 1-10 the next should be evened out over time.

Third, how well do coaches teach as part of their “regular” school day? One of the most common yet inexcusable mistakes that coaches make is to regard their teaching load as a necessary evil to land a coaching job, paying scant attention to preparing their classes, not keeping up with their grading, or even worse, to use class time as an opportunity to prepare for the game that night. Let’s be honest: coaches in Alabama receive sizable stipends that typically mean they’re paid better than a ordinary teacher in a school. The only way that can be rationalized, out of justice, is that the coaching stipend reflects work that is above and beyond a normal teacher’s load. When coaches subordinate their teaching to their coaching as “either-or” and don’t regard it as “both-and”, I believe that’s grounds for firing a coach, regardless of how successful their teams are.

Finally, how well do coaches handle the “peripheral” parts of coaching? For example, do they insist with their athletes to keep locker-rooms clean? Do they protect school inventory? Do they secure the building when they leave? Do they keep fields locked up after practices? Do they insist that practice fields are left free from litter? Some coaches become so myopic about their coaching that they forget these are important barometers of their coaching success from the view point of athletic directors and principals! Coaches must be reliable in these matters.

When coaches do these four things well, they can be powerful, positive influences in the lives of their players and in the whole milieu of their schools. May we find and cultivate such coaches!