Play to Win

The sheer volume of things I accomplish in a week as a turnaround teacher simply because I have to is amazing.  I have never been so efficient or productive in my life.  But that leaves little time for sanity and humanness.

My Wind Ensemble director in college, Steven J. Moore, was a University of Kentucky graduate, so he loved college basketball, and basketball strategy became musical strategy.

He would often tell us this.  When playing a challenging opponent, a team who has the lead may stop playing to win.  They start running the clock - just playing not to lose.  Precisely here, they play worse, and they begin to lose.  In Wind Ensemble, we were up against a worthy opponent in the challenge of the musical piece that was before us, and he charged us with playing not to lose.  We were losing.  He challenged us to the offense: get on top of it.  Be on the offense, not the defense.  Play to win.


Running a classroom can only ever work this way - when the teacher has no fear of losing, only the conviction to win.  A teacher is required to manage a million observations, decisions, directions, affections, without reprieve, for so many hours straight during a day.

Yup.  You were built for it.  Do it.  Get on it.  Play to win.


I am finally finding success ONLY when I, in my interior conviction, and in my path of action, play to win. I have to:

• Get enough sleep to have the physical and mental energy to stay on it 9 hours a day.  This requires incredible, beautiful, sacrificial acts of humility.  This is my Lenten resolution.
• Read the right stuff and asking questions to the right people (sharpening the saw) to remind me what good staying on it looks like.
• Ask all day long, and at the end of the day: "What do I need to do to make this work, to get them  to learn this, to get their attention, to solve that problem?"  I try the little things and I keep trying. 

This constant proactive thinking, possible only on top of a simple, natural foundation of health and rest, is playing to win.  And the overflowing grace is this:

I come upon personal challenges in my life outside of school that I formerly might have wallowed in, felt miserable and sorry for myself, or complained about, the subtle but powerful habit of the other 50 hours per week kicks in: Get on it.  What do I need to do to make this work, solve or remedy this problem?  I try out the little things and I keep going.  The beautiful necessity of the need at school is affecting my life: I play to win.  

Do you not know that the runners in the stadium all run in the race, but only one wins the prize? Run so as to win.  --1 Corinthians 9:24