Partnership Educators,
It was a cold rainy March night in Hershey, Pennsylvania when a sparse crowd shuffled in to watch the two professional basketball teams play their scheduled game that night. It was estimated that a bit more than 4000 fans came out to watch the game between the Philadelphia Warriors and the New York Nicks. In 1962, the Warriors were playing in Hershey in order to facilitate larger crowds at their games. There were no television cameras and no New York sportswriters covering this. The only known recording was a fourth-quarter radio broadcast. No one expected what actually happened, and now it is just a part of professional basketball lore.
The Warriors employed a third year veteran named Wilt Chamberlain. He was a 7 foot, 275-pound man that could score at will. He would often shrug off multiple defenders to put the ball in the basket. That night he was truly amazing. At the end of the first quarter, he had scored 23 points. That isn’t that amazing, but by the end of the first half, he had scored 41 points. It wasn’t until he had scored 69 points at the end of the third quarter that people knew something special was happening. Wilt Chamberlain ended the game scoring 100 points by himself. It was a mark that has never been repeated in NBA history. Actually, Wilt averaged 50 points a game that season which is a mark that will most likely never be matched. But Wilt had one Achilles heel. He was a terrible free throw shooter. Before that year he was only making, on average, four out of every 10 free throws he tried. If you are not familiar, the free throw is a shot that is 15 feet from the basket, and no one is allowed to defend you. You get to take your time to shoot the ball in the basket on your own. One of the highest scorers in the game and he couldn’t shoot from the “charity stripe,” as it is sometimes called, at a high rate.
So Wilt couldn’t shoot the easiest shot in basketball. But that year, and in particular in that game, Wilt tried a different tactic. He was shooting underhand from the free throw line and it was working. That night in Hershey, Pennsylvania, Wilt made 28 out of 32. That was an astounding 87%. He was actually raising his average that year as a whole. Wilt Chamberlain, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, had found a solution to his problem. But then he did something that changed that trajectory. He stopped shooting underhand and went back to his dismal 40%. Why would someone who had finally found a solution to the one area of his professional career that he needed to work on stop using a solution that solved that issue? Here are Wilt’s own words in his autobiography. “I felt silly, like a sissy shooting underhand. I know I was wrong. I know some of the best foul shooters in history shot that way. Even now one of the best players in the NBA, Rick Berry, shoots underhanded. I just couldn’t do it.” He just couldn’t do it? What? But this might have helped his team to never lose a game, and he just couldn’t do it.
What can we learn from this piece of information? Well first of all, for those of us who can’t shoot a free throw, we might want to consider the underhand shooting technique. But also we should recognize that beliefs aren’t going to matter as much if you want to understand why people do or don’t do something. You have to understand the social context in which they are operating. It takes real social courage for a student, or a staff member, to make a change or do what is clearly going to work at certain key moments. People will wait until their thresholds are met before they get fully on board. How do we change the dynamics so the thresholds of people are helping us affect the behavior that we know will help kids? How do we get that one student to stand and clap so that it activates more students to do the same?
The trajectory that children follow can sometimes be redirected by things that might at first seem, to the adults, to be small and insignificant. The tone of a voice. The words are written on a Post-it note. The way a class is organized. The extra time is taken to listen to a child facing a challenge and coaching them to persevere. Those personal actions can create powerful changes, and those individual changes could help to activate the thresholds of many more students and adults at our schools. The purpose is to build a school where it doesn’t take social courage to step out and say that it isn't cool what you are doing. Our purpose is to help the 90% of kids who want to just come to school and do the right thing to take charge of their school and be the change every day in the lives of others.
TEDxToronto – Drew Dudley “Leading with Lollipops” https://youtu.be/hVCBrkrFrBE
Superintendent Search Update:
The board appreciated the feedback and open communication that came to them online as well as the special board meeting. They have met and gone through the applications and have chosen some of those applicants to interview next week on Thursday and Friday. It is their hope that they will make a selection after the interview process and will be able to announce within the next few months.
Rob Adams