Ideas & Inspirations

 “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is best.” Over the past few months, the first half of that statement has been everywhere. Good. Better. Best. It became a mantra tied to the Chicago Bears’ unexpected season and their return to the playoffs. For many fans, those words felt new. Fresh. Energizing. They were not new to me. Years ago, when I was principal at Plato, we talked a great deal about excellence. Not as a buzzword, and certainly not as a synonym for perfection. We talked about excellence as doing the best you possibly can with what you have, where you are. There was a stretch of time when we began many of our mornings with the full mantra, not just the catchy first line. The emphasis mattered. We were intentional about framing excellence as personal growth rather than comparison. Today should be better than yesterday. This week better than last week. This month better than last month. This year better than last year. If t...

Tomorrow, Indiana University will head to its first football championship in quite some time. They are undefeated and, by any objective measure, having an incredible season. This creates a problem for me. I am a Purdue graduate. My wife is a Purdue graduate. One of our daughters is a Purdue graduate. The rivalry between Purdue and IU is not subtle. Walk around Purdue’s campus and you will see “IU sucks” signs. It is a chant shouted after every kickoff, regardless of who Purdue is actually playing. Rivalries like this are baked into identity. So of course, we have given our other daughter and anyone else who graduated from IU a hard time. The same goes for friends and family who attend or are considering attending. That is part of the culture. Playful banter. Ribbing. A shared understanding that allegiance comes with jokes at someone else’s expense. And that is where it should end. Healthy rivalry creates space for competition without contempt. It pushes each side to sharpen its ed...

During this past holiday season, I attended my wife’s holiday party. It was exactly what you would expect from a room full of educators. Easy laughter, shared frustrations, food, drinks, and that lightened emotional state that comes when the end of a quarter and a break are finally in sight. As we sat talking, my wife and her colleagues started pointing out the “babies” who had recently joined her team. New teachers. Fresh energy. Wide-eyed optimism. At some point, we realized something that stopped us for a moment. Some of them were the same age as our own kids. Then one of her colleagues walked in, stopped in her tracks, and stared at me. She looked familiar, but I could not immediately place her. She eventually sat with us and said, almost casually, that I had been her principal at Thea Bowman. I was only at Thea Bowman for one year. It was my first year as a principal. I was thirty years old and, if I am honest, there were plenty of moments when I questioned whether I should be run...

A Missed Countdown We talk often about the dangers of pursuing perfection. How chasing it usually leads to disappointment. How it sets us up to feel like we are always falling short. I say this to others regularly. I believe it. And yet, I rarely practice it. Why? Because perfection is bred into many of us. It is reinforced quietly and consistently. Through expectations. Through praise. Through what gets noticed and what does not. So even when we know better, we still reach for it. Almost instinctively. This year, New Year’s Eve was small. Just me, my wife, my mother-in-law, and my sister-in-law. We were watching the final episode of Stranger Things , and I realized it would run past midnight. In typical fashion, I prepared. I set a timer for ten minutes before the new year so I could get ready. When the timer went off, I grabbed the champagne and glasses and came back to the room. All that was left was turning on Channel 7 so we could count down with the rest of Chicago. Simple enough...