Do as I Say, Not as I Do

When a parent receives their child’s high school schedule in August the first thing they look at is whether their child has received the courses they requested. When the child looks at that same schedule the first thing they look for is when they have been assigned lunch.

When my youngest daughter received her schedule in her senior year she had indeed received the classes she had requested. But unlike her sisters, a letter was enclosed with her schedule and it stated that a new top down policy prohibited students from tweaking their schedule for any reason--especially lunch. Guidance counselors were no longer able to access the computer to make changes.

This was problematic. Kara’s schedule placed her lunch period around 9:30 in the morning—she needed to change her lunch period, not for social reasons, but because scheduling lunch at 9:30 in the morning is simply ridiculous.

And so I appealed to her guidance counselor who appealed to the head of guidance. The head of guidance dug her heels in and said no—even though the change would have helped out the system. A simple flip would have put Kara into a class with a lower enrollment with the same teacher and given her a more reasonable lunch period. So my guidance counselor, hero that he was, at peril to his own working relationship, pursued  someone a rung up. And because it was deemed that “the computer had made an error”, Kara was granted the change.

Fortunately for them, my two older daughters lived under a reign of school administration where there was freedom in changing a child’s schedule. Anything from academic courses to gym and lunch could be modified. The guiding philosophy was that if a child’s needs could be accommodated by flipping a few things around, not only was no harm done, but tailoring a schedule fostered success. Happy students were more engaged students. And more engaged students meant better grades. And students with better grades was a win-win for all parties involved.

This former philosophy to me is a no-brainer. Which presupposes the concept that the top-down decision prohibiting guidance counselors from instituting guidance was made by those with no brains—The top-down decision makers haven’t quite grasped the fundamentals of education—or management.

And when I see the posse of central administration top-down decision makers sitting all together every day at noon at various restaurants in town scarfing down their food, I wonder how happy they would be if in their work environment they had no lunch buddies or were forced to eat their lunch at breakfast time. I wonder if they would appreciate a work environment where what is good for the goose is good for the gander and not an environment where it is do as I say and not as I do.