Now, we’re positioning our students to go into a situation where they’re going to compete with the rest of the world. Well, what is it that other folks know and do that we need to make sure that we’re doing? 

Foreign language

Now the rest of the world y’all, they all speak their mother tongue, and they speak English, and they could possibly speak two or three more languages. When I was in South Africa, I met children who spoke five languages. When I visited Japan, I saw middle and high school Japanese students speak flawless English. They could write it; they could read it; they could speak it, and they communicated with us perfectly. Now we travelers struggled with Japanese that we learned in preparation for the trip, but we were nowhere near able to communicate with them as freely as we wanted to and the students felt that we were on that trip. Well, what does the foreign language allow you to do? It boosts your brain power. It increases your job opportunities because if you can talk to more than one set of people speak more than one language the world opens up to you literally and your network fails.

Sports

Now, I’m gonna tell story around this sports thing because a lot of folks think my

child can run fast, catch balls, throw balls, sink a three point with no problems. That’s all good. That’s great. Continue to develop those skills. But, I want to implore you to develop your child’s brain just as much as you’re developing those athletic skills. Spend time writing and reading and doing math – as much time as you spend at football games. Please make sure you’re doing that because I want to share with you a story of a young man in my class several years ago.

I’ll call him Tony. So, Tony was in my class and he was a senior. He came in every day and put his head down. But on Friday, Tony came alive on football still catching balls running making points. You know, he was a star.

So I’ll checked around with my colleagues about what Tony was doing in their classes. They all answered, “He goes to sleep”. And I’m thinking, “Tony is sleeping in my class. And he’s sleeping in math class. I continued to ask, “What is Tom supposed to be doing with his life?” They replied, “Oh, he’s trying to go to the league.” Great! Awesome goal! But first things first. Let’s make sure Tony can calculate his contract. Let’s make sure he can read it. Or, let’s make sure he can access where he’s signing his name. Tony’s goal is great, but without works, it’s just a dream because what happens is that there’s gonna be a shakeout; a whittling down of the millions of other talented Tony’s out there. 

But, first, let me tell you what else happened. I came down to the end of the semester, and Tony was failing my class and the coaches came to me and they were very insistent that he pass my class. And I’m said, “Well, I’m very insistent that Tony do the work to pass. But he didn’t pass because he refused to do the work. They wanted me to pass him just so that he could go and take our school to the championship. I did see him on the field that Friday and our team did go to the championship. Not sure how —-but..I’m just sayin’. 

I don’t know what happened to Tony’s football career, but I’ve been looking at the NFL roster ever since then, and I haven’t seen him. Tony was not building his brain while he was sitting in classrooms sleeping because he put all of his eggs in that sports basket. 

So I wanted to show you some statistics that I got from the NCAA website. There are over a million prospective football players who are out there, sweating and working really hard, talented, and try to make it in a situation where they are competing with a million other Tonys.

But only 71,000 of them will go to college to play ball and out of that 71,864, around 830 actually make it to the league. So, if you have a sports enthusiast, by all means go after your dreams. Be sure though to build your body AND your brain.

ARTS

We have some talented folks out here: people singing naturally; they’re dramatic; they play instruments.

But, if you don’t have what it takes to pass that audition to get into the schools, their lack of preparation is going to be a dream killer. So yes, you can play by ear; you just sing like a bird because it’s just natural. But please learn scales. Please learn the technical knowledge, the technical vocabulary. Go get some lessons. I know a lot of folks are really big into private lessons, and then there are some prodigies. Some may want to go to a high school that will send them to Broadway – and there are schools out there they will send you straight to Broadway. They will send you straight to the dance world. But you must be prepared.

Leadership

Next up, is leadership. Yes, everybody wants to be president, vice president, secretary; everybody wants to have a title but real leadership is not necessarily a title. Leadership is a set of skills and your child should most definitely be honing in those skills even if they aren’t the president, even if they aren’t the captain. 

Can your child set and execute goals even personal goals? 

Can your child communicate verbally? non verbally because that’s important too. 

Can your child set those goals and then give responsibility to others? 

Can they delegate and build a team and are they able to follow? 

It’s really hard sometimes for folks who have big personalities to be a follower.

Sometimes it’s hard for a person who has a more unique personality to be a leader. But we have to make sure that we tell both of those extroverts and introverts, there’s a place for you. There’s an avenue for you to show your strengths. And just because there are titles out there leadership does not always lie in the title.

Remember, we begin with the end in mind. We have to make sure that these students are ready to lead because they are the future. They have to lead us to the next generation. So, I keep coming back to these three ideas of perspective. How are we looking at what we have to work with? When we understand what our child’s strengths are, what their weaknesses are, what they gravitate towards what they repel we can position them. We need to put healthy pressure so that the things that they need – like reading, writing, math, the leadership, the foreign language, the building of the brain AND the body –  we need to apply healthy pressure so that they’re ready to position themselves to compete.