Seeing the faces of several hundred new graduates walk across the stage last week prompted a period of reflection for me. It was enlightening talking to graduates at the post-commencement reception back on campus. Multiple grads shared their mixed emotions about how excited they were for their next step while also feeling sad to be leaving MVCC. This made me think about how excited I am for all the changes soon to come with our Guided Pathways efforts while still processing the emotional toll of another extremely challenging budget process that included several difficult personnel decisions.
I found insight in a quote from Rick Warren, Pastor of Saddleback Church, in his TED talk about “How to Remain Relevant.” He says, “There is no growth without change; there is no change without pain; no pain without loss; and no loss without grief.” In all my years of studying and experiencing change, I’ve never connected the two cycles. However, if you overlay accepted change models with the five stages of grieving, they’re almost identical. Warren goes on to say that many times it’s not that people are resisting change, it’s more likely that they are grieving. Recognizing this as a natural organizational reality surfaces the notion of organizational healing.
Change is often referred to as a constant in our lives, but it seems that regardless of how well-managed change may be, it likely will be experienced across the spectrum from minimal to traumatic depending on the impact. This is especially true when the change is dictated not by innovation, or in the name of student success, but rather is driven by external factors like money or lack thereof. Budgetary cuts are just that — cuts that serve as wounds to the organization. And, like surviving any trauma, there is a period of recovery with necessary self-care. Organizations are complex adaptive systems much in the same way the human body is, and as such they need time to heal.
While we experienced enrollment growth during the Great Recession, change was comparatively easier because there was “more.” In the subsequent years of enrollment decline, the organizational growth has been harder because there was “less” and we challenged ourselves to do “better” — our new mantra of “more and better with less.” This has come from our adopted philosophy of “preserve the core and stimulate progress” that requires us to manage the paradox of personnel reductions while adding new positions to meet emerging demands.
The annual rhythm of balancing a budget under increasingly complex constraints can wear on us as individuals and test our collective resilience. However, the organizational will to march on is what makes the difference and this requires a period of healing to absorb the impact of the change, pain, loss, and grief. This is how we gather our strength, lift each other up, and find the resolve to continue. During these times we must rely on our organizational rituals, continue celebrating and recognizing the bright spots that make us who we are to feed our souls and nurture our hearts. It is indeed different for all of us, but as many colleagues have said, “We’ll get through it, because we always do.” That enduring spirit of finding a way, of modeling the way, is what inspires confidence and encourages excellence, and allows us to embrace our community.
Change is hard. But recognizing grief as a natural part of the change process allows us to take the necessary deep breath and move toward healing that will allow us to endure and focus on the future that holds ever-more inspiring stories from students and colleagues going beyond expectations in ways we have yet to imagine — all of which make change, however difficult, worth it.
If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.
With the overwhelming pace of technological change and the complexity and divisiveness of changes in society, people may increasingly find themselves not only overwhelmed, but less than inspired in their daily work. As changes at our colleges accelerate in the midst of intensifying external pressures, it can be natural to feel anxious about all that is not within our immediate control regardless of our job or position. An ever-changing context like this increases the need for a tether to provide some level of consistency and emotional security as we go about our work.
The extent to which people can link their j-o-b to a higher purpose can serve as that tether in all the disruption. I always come back to the parable of the person in 16th-century Europe who came upon three workers doing the same job and asked them what they were doing. The first worker said, “I’m laying brick.” The second worker said, “I’m building a wall.” The third worker said, “I’m creating a cathedral.” They were all doing the exact same work but had three very different views of how they were approaching that work, with the last one having a deeper sense of why they were doing what they were doing.
Having a sense of why jobs exist and how work gets done can serve as intrinsic motivation and inspire work/life harmony for each of us. When we’re motivated and inspired in our work it doesn’t seem like work, and the time seems to pass quickly. When motivation and inspiration are absent, it’s the exact opposite and we’re not likely to do our best work while our levels of stress, frustration, and unhappiness increase.
We are fortunate to work in a community college where our collective efforts have the power to transform the lives of our students and better our community in countless ways. If we apply the “laying brick/cathedral” parable to work here at the College, it could be said for any of the following:
I’m teaching my classes/I’m helping my students learn/I’m transforming lives by challenging and supporting them to learn and grow to become all they hope to be.
I’m taking care of the grounds or buildings/I’m making the campus look good/I’m transforming lives by creating a beautiful learning environment.
I’m doing the task in front of me/I’m helping others/I’m transforming lives by helping the College serve students a little better every day.
Author and speaker Simon Sinek offers a similar three-level framework for organizations in his book, Start with Why. He talks about the golden circle of organizations thinking about what they do, how they do it, and why they do it. The most successful organizations flip this model and think first about why, then about how and what they do. For colleges, it’s easy to think of our vision statement as our why; core values as our how; and mission statement as our what. Thinking in this way adds an emotional element to the work and subsequently increases engagement, motivation, focus, and performance for the entire organization. Connecting to a higher purpose and having a shared reason for why we do our individual work can create a collective energy and shape our overall organizational culture in positive ways. Having a common why is the fundamental building block to an aligned, healthy, and high-performing organization. It’s not easy and takes constant reinforcement, but the more we can all hone in on why we each do what we do — and the extent to which we share the same why — the better we can continue to make this a special place to work, learn, and grow as members of the MVCC community. Ideas shared in this post are informed by my book, Competing on Culture: Driving Change in Community Colleges. If you have any questions or comments, please contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.
Peter Drucker is credited with saying, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” If colleges and universities are to pursue new strategies for success in the future, culture had better be a major priority. However, as the foundations of nearly every industry are undergoing fundamental change, the dynamics of the modern workplace are growing increasingly complex and make tending to culture and the variables thatshape it more difficult than ever.
I recently saw a presentation by Future of Work Strategist Heather McGowan, who pointed out that society may be changing even faster than technology. Consider modern-day politics and media outlets that are increasingly filled with subtle (and not so subtle) messages and issues of race and “otherness” related to the impending minority majority — where whites will no longer comprise more than 50 percent of the United States. It’s also no longer about male/female: gay/lesbian, as now gay marriage, transgendered, and gender fluidity are more common in society. A record number of women and racial minorities were elected to Congress last fall, signaling a major change in political leadership and representation. The legalization of marijuana in several states is just one more example of societal changes that few would have predicted 10 years ago. And finally, the daily energy required for the critical thought to parse through what is real and what is “fake news” within the negative rhetoric too easily found in the media only increases the likelihood of negative cycles associated with getting through a typical day.
For those working in public community colleges across the country, we have watched competition, shifting demographics, and changes in the economy lead to negative effects on enrollment in many regions. All of this at a time when public postsecondary education is increasingly moving from a public good to a private commodity for those who can afford it. As a result, many colleges are basically operating with the same amount of operating dollars (or less) than we had seven years ago, which has prompted difficult decisions and fewer people to do the important work of our colleges. Increasingly constrained resources combined with accelerating technology and significant changes in society naturally create a higher level of intensity in the modern workplace. This constant pressure annually compounds itself with no rest. The difficult changes keep multiplying, which can wear on even the strongest of souls.
The increasing intensity from societal change and the accelerated pace of work manifests itself in greater incidents of anxiety and exhaustion. All of it leaving individuals with little reserve to invest in relationships that are the core to our well-being as humans. It’s easier to just go home and plop in front of a screen rather than coordinate social calendars. Over time, we may lose sight of our own needs and the needs of those closest to us. For those with children, divorces, ailing or aging parents and family members, disabilities and other variables, the stresses can be even greater. The fraying of social relationships has helped foster what Dr. Vivek Murthy, former U.S. Surgeon General, calls an epidemic of loneliness. He talks about how people want to be seen and known authentically in ways that John Zogby predicted 10 years ago in his book, The Way We’ll Be.
These variables show up in every modern workplace on a daily basis in ways that quietly and often invisibly influence our interactions and decision-making. In addition to employees wrestling with the variables in the modern workplace, colleges and universities have an additional challenge as these forces are influencing changes in student populations. More students are coming to campus with anxiety, depression, and other mental health issues that have changed the classroom dynamic and added to the stress associated with the work of faculty and staff who work with students.
These changes in the modern workplace and general human condition provide the context to changes that need to happen at our colleges. To keep pace with changes in technology, teaching and learning, and other areas, robust professional development and personnel enrichment programs are essential to create a continuous feed of new ideas into the institution and provide opportunities for employees to learn and grow. Recognition programs are also essential to shine a light on the outstanding work of our colleagues. This is more than “this new generation today grew up where everyone gets a trophy.” It’s more about people giving their best to their employer and being seen and celebrated for going above and beyond on behalf of students and colleagues — to recharge the batteries and inspire them to keep going. Colleges of all sizes and shapes need to intentionally design “creative collisions” that allow employees time and space to interact informally. This can take the form of brown-bag lunches, mid-semester “thank you bagel gatherings,” college-sponsored coffee breaks, coordinated happy hours, and other informal convenings. Finally, college-sponsored wellness councils are more important than ever to consider ways to coordinate and nurture these social gatherings; prompt physical wellness programs; support mental health offerings; and promote financial well-being in ways that help employees shape a better future for themselves.
Social events and other wellness programs intended to promote wellness of all kinds can be useful, but if people are outright exhausted, simply more support may only add to the stress. This is why it’s important to disconnect at times. Whether it be taking vacation, a staycation, a mental health day of rest, setting more realistic expectations (under-promise and over-deliver), or not being bound by your smartphone and 24/7 email, “slowing down to speed up” is critical. People talk about work/life balance as a holy grail of sorts, but it’s more realistic to consider the concept of work/life harmony — it’s not about balance, but about congruence in all you do that feeds personal positivity. Increasingly, the value of managing your energy, not your timeis gaining attention as the most productive concept to help with this “easier said than done” concept.
As our mantra increasingly becomes “doing more AND BETTER with less,” the stress and pressures will only increase, making it harder to establish and nurture social connections and personal relationships, but making it even more important for us to see and support each other as colleagues and friends. As we spend so much of our days finding ways to love our students, we can’t forget to find ways and make a stronger effort to love each other and ourselves as well. Organizational cultures that make this a priority will go beyond surviving the uncertain future that is emerging across the higher education landscape — they will be the ones that thrive.
If you have any thoughts on this or ideas about what more can be done to foster connections and creative collisions with your colleagues here at MVCC, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly at presblog@mvcc.edu.
With content and learning opportunities increasingly available in varied forms, it’s not surprising that business startups are appearing with regularity to offer platforms that create personalized transcripting options. Utilizing technology and data analytics, these firms are compiling individual resumès, employer job descriptions, college transcripts, and other means to align individual learning and help students capture their learning journey in new ways.
Today more than ever, colleges need to find their place in the ever widening landscape of credentialing. Where we once were the sole gatekeepers to the kingdom of credentials, we have become one option in an ever widening sea of options. The traditional classroom experience will always remain the primary option for some, but it is no longer the fit for all. This raises the question, “How can we add to our current practices in order to engage students in these new spaces without losing track of who we are as a learning institution?”
Helps individuals capture and convey skills through portable credentials also connects employers and job applicants. The platform was developed for the Colorado Community College System to find a sustainable and comprehensive approach to digital badging and has taken off and expanded from there.
Developed at the University of Maryland University College, Helio provides data science and visualization using data on the entire student lifecycle to personalize the student experience.
Helps people track and measure their own learning in a very personalized fashion. Degreed developed machine-curated content that is highly personalized through customized learning pathways. They have a mobile app to transcript everything, including podcasts you listen to and make notes on what you learn. It was launched with students in mind, but employers are now looking to use it for their employees.
This is a non-profit with multiple career centers focused on a range of high-demand fields that work with local employers to clarify competencies required for workplace success in any given job. They work primarily with employers, but have already started linking students, employers, and colleges like the Cedar Valley Community College in Dallas for customized credit-bearing curriculum to meet workforce demands.
Provides students with a comprehensive, state-of-the-art platform (including social media options) to reflect on their learning and spotlight meaning with the ability to share it in a variety of ways.
Provides translation of military training and experience with civilian credentials. Helps fill the gaps and facilitates solutions for former military personnel with resources for Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force.
MVCC is exploring ways to maintain its relevance in these changing times. From re-examining our practices in Prior Learning Assessment, to creating meaningful and rigorous pathways between our non-credit training and credit experiences, to our efforts in microcredentials, MVCC continues to broaden its horizons while staying tethered to the traditional classroom experience.
All of these organizations and platforms are artifacts of the new reality that continuous learning is the future and people need ways to manage all the ways they learn. Beyond these options, the cryptocurrency blockchain is gaining increasing interest as the most likely end-game in this space. An article from 2016quoted a couple of authors that compared blockchain’s application in managing financial currency and financial capital to the potential of documenting and managing reputation as currency and social capital through a consolidated learning transcript. If colleges no longer have sole proprietorship over the transcript, but are just one of many, how might our own reputation as currency, social capital, and overall relevance change?
I remember the anxiety I felt in 2012 when it seemed every other day for several months I would trip across a story about Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and how they were going to disrupt and fundamentally change higher education. When some of the most prestigious colleges and universities began offering their curriculum online for free, it was hard to miss the fact that things were changing. Fortunately, the headlines subsided and most higher education professionals took a cleansing breath and rationalized that MOOCs lacked a sustainable financial model and would soon go away — we didn’t have to worry about them.
However, MOOCs amplified the fundamental structural flaws of modern postsecondary education — rising costs, questionable outcomes, lack of personalization, lack of flexibility, too much variability based on delivery by individual faculty members, and misalignment between programs and employability. Since 2012, MOOCs have indeed persisted to the point that in 2016 the three largest MOOCs in the United States earned a combined $100 million net profit and beat most every college to market with the concept of scaled employer-driven credentials. Check them out and peruse their offerings to see just how accessible and affordable they are, as well as the name brands providing the instruction — Udacity, Coursera, and edX.
Similar to MOOCs, the Khan Academy has infiltrated K-12 systems across the nation and is widely used (albeit discreetly in most cases) in higher education. With several large funders like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Khan Academy is providing supplemental learning through short, clear, and extremely useful videos on content across a range of disciplines. In 2018, more than 100 million people accessed content on Khan Academy’s website with nearly 5 million paid subscribers.
Another platform influencing modern learning is Google Classroom. In 2012, Google accounted for about 1% of all media devices used in public K-12 classrooms. With the launch of Google Classroom and Chromebooks, their market share grew to 58% by 2016. Colleges today are finding recent high school graduates arrive wondering why they must purchase large expensive textbooks when they’ve been reading short, relevant, easily accessible content online for the past four years in high school.
The explosion of online content and platforms like Khan Academy and Google Chromebooks have spawned the development of Open Educational Resources (OERs). The modern textbook is undergoing a complete transformation and is being replaced by online content — sometimes through OERs and resources like Collective Commons, and other times through licensing other online resources.
With online content so readily accessible and the power of platforms accelerating change, new models of delivery are appearing beyond MOOCs and OERs. For example, Udemyprovides curriculum from independent educators offering standard undergraduate curriculum at reasonable prices. Straighterline.comoffers the 50 most common undergraduate general education courses for a nominal fee. The curriculum is approved by the American Council of Education and offered through more than 130 college and university partners. In 2017, they enrolled 22,000 new students in addition to the 75,000 already enrolled and had students report successfully transferring their courses to more than 2,000 colleges and universities. While some may question their quality at this point, the arguments remind me of those I heard 25 years ago when the University of Phoenix, Walden, Nova, and others burst on the scene with online programs — and most of us spent the subsequent 10 years playing catch up once their quality improved.
The reality of wildly accessible content and people increasingly comfortable learning in varied ways is now facilitating the largest employers bypassing traditional higher education delivery systems (read colleges and universities) to simply offer their own curriculum to accelerate the development of a qualified workforce. Consider employer-driven content like AT&T and Walmart partnering with Coursera; Salesforce offering free curriculum to train associates across the country to take their product to scale; Google offering their IT Certifications; and the intense demand for computer programmers has prompted the rise of coding boot camps like the Flatiron Schoolthat is now approved for federal financial aid, Apple and their Everyone Can Codecurriculum and Amazon coding camps.
MVCC is uniquely positioned to address these disruptive innovations because of the work we have done over the last several years. With the creation of a the Code Academy, the incorporation of the Google IT Training Certificate into our non-credit offerings and soon our credit offerings, and our current work in examining and redesigning prior learning assessments, we are ready to do the work necessary to stay relevant while maintaining the highest of academic standards. MVCC is the first community college in the SUNY System to adopt a Board of Trustees Policy on Microcredentials, and it is this kind of forward thinking — and our unique ability to take innovations and make them our own — that will help us thrive in these uncertain times.
The future is already here. We must find small spaces to safely prototype and utilize some of these emerging delivery systems to eventually integrate into our regular, core offerings that in five to 10 years will need to dramatically change in ways we’re only now beginning to see.
Thomas Friedman’s latest book, Thank You for Being Late: The Optimist’s Guide to the Age of Acceleration, provides a thorough examination of all the forces driving and truly accelerating change, with an emphasis on the manner by which technology is disrupting every sector of our lives … and likewise, higher education itself is in the early stages of disruption.
As community colleges, we pride ourselves on thinking about how our communities are changing and thinking about the future of work; however, we talk about the future of work as though it’s a detached, existential concept — someone else’s work and not our own. When we think about the future of work, we must make a special effort to also consider the future of OUR work and how it is fundamentally changing.
The general notion of college as we know it is not going away anytime soon. A smaller percentage of Americans will attend a traditional college setting as they clock in their 45 hours of seat time for each credit hour of sitting— er, I mean learning. We will, however, have fewer colleges, as smaller colleges are unable to weather the storm, and close their doors or merge with others. Most colleges will rather retain many of the familiar elements but will morph into adaptive enterprises with creative networks and unique partnerships to meet future student needs. Students are already learning differently. Many teenagers today are fearless. Why wouldn’t they be when they can search for YouTube videos on how to do, build, create, fix, and learn most anything? As I’ve heard my friend and Amarillo College President Russell Lowery-Hart say, “Let’s face it, things need to evolve — faculty have students fact-checking them on smartphones in real time during class!” Even many returning adults are learning in new ways, as they too can search YouTube videos to learn new things and are often more motivated to access content through podcasts and other means.
To summarize Peter Smith’s focus in his recent book, Free-Range Learning in the Digital Age: The Emerging Revolution in College, Career, and Education, the new reality is that colleges and universities used to be an oasis of knowledge surrounded by a desert only a few could cross. With technology today, the desert has gone green. It’s not that disruption is coming for higher education, it’s already here in the form of wildly accessible content, private companies with transcripting platforms to document all that learning, and accelerating technology that will fundamentally change how people learn.
Although disruption to this point feels more like an uncomfortable itch than a broken limb, many colleges are already in the midst of managing a profound array of unprecedented paradox. With organizational cultures rooted in and shaped by more than 300 years of academic traditions, behaviors, and beliefs, community colleges must find ways to:
productively honor the past while creating the future;
adapt to change by following the principle of preserve the core and stimulate progress that Jim Collins set forth in his book Good to Great;
balance access through enrollment (which drives 75 percent of MVCC’s operating budget through tuition and state aid) and student success and graduation (which requires processes that counter access at times); and
respond to increasingly strained fiscal resources while adapting to change by managing simultaneous personnel layoffs and hiring for new positions in college budgets necessary to keep the institution evolving and vibrant.
And all of these paradoxical elements can be summarized in the new reality for community colleges — the need to do more AND better with less. MVCC is undergoing changes at a rapid pace, and the need for further and more innovative change is only going to accelerate our efforts with Guided Pathways. From new intake systems to redesigning developmental education, MVCC is anticipating the need, and every day is learning to do more and better with less.
As I mentioned in my previous post, the wave of change is coming, and those colleges that recognize it sooner rather than later (#anticipate) will make it to shore safely. They may have a redesigned or reimagined surfboard or will have manufactured an even more efficient, relevant, and successful mechanism to ride the wave, but they will make it to shore nonetheless. Those colleges that fail to turn into the wave just enough to accelerate out of the tube will be overwhelmed and vanish — it’s just a matter of time.
I recently saw a video on Twitter showing a surfer setting the world record for riding the largest wave (82 feet tall) and I retweeted the first thing that came to my mind: "I don't know why, but I can't help but think that this is a metaphor for public higher education leaders in the next 5-10 years...#anticipate."
Upon further reflection, I think the metaphor came to mind because higher education is quietly being disrupted. The ripples are small right now, but the tide is definitely going out, and those who fail to see it will be overcome by a tsunami of change in the coming years. Fortunately, MVCC is one of more than 250 of America’s 1,100 community colleges engaged in Guided Pathways reform in some way. MVCC is one of the 13 community colleges in the American Association of Community Colleges Guided Pathways 2.0 cohort and is fortunate to simultaneously participate in the New York State Success Center Guided Pathways cohort funded by Jobs For the Future (JFF). With funding from our Oneida County sponsor, we are able to send teams of faculty and staff to institutes to receive technical assistance and coaching that expose us to national best practices and a framework for fundamentally reimagining the student experience. We are also fortunate to have financial support from our County to be members of the Achieving the Dream (ATD) National Reform Network since 2014. The culture shift that we’ve experienced through this network served as a critical pre-cursor to our Guided Pathways work.
My early experience at the Guided Pathways institutes gave me the impression that this reform was about two things — organizing academic program curricula into clear career pathways for students; and rethinking student onboarding and support systems. Simple and clear, I thought. The deeper our teams got into Guided Pathways, it became abundantly clear that there was more to this reform, and it was anything but simple. To truly apply the Guided Pathways framework and reimagine the student experience, we are in the process of:
1.Remapping our entire curriculum across all programs.
2.Rethinking our student onboarding process from admissions to the first day of class.
3.Overhauling our student advising system to consider more intentional and personalized models at scale.
4.Frontloading career services to support students in making better choices at the beginning of their academic experience — as a two-year college, our students don’t have time to drift around and “find themselves.”
5.Transforming our approaches to developmental education by embracing national research and evidence-based practices that have demonstrated more effective models to address student learning needs.
6.Disaggregating our data to understand the impact of our systems on low-income and minority students to put equity front and center in our collective work.
7.Infusing data into our regular decision-making processes.
8.Providing inescapable wrap-around supports to address students’ non-cognitive needs associated with everyday living, like housing and food insecurities, transportation, and other priorities that can compromise student success.
9.Evaluating all of our technologies that have grown in number and complexity in an effort to leverage everything we have toward increasing student success.
10.Finding new ways of working together as we do all of this simultaneously, when in the past any one of these efforts alone would have taken two years or more.
Guided Pathways is not a fad or a project, but rather a comprehensive, evidence-based framework that requires a long-term, ongoing institutional commitment that will continue to evolve as we fundamentally re-examine our approaches to student success. As dramatic and disruptive as the pending changes from this work will be, I believe it is only a precursor to even more disruptive changes that lie ahead for postsecondary education — changes that will likely unbundle, accelerate, and once again re-imagine learning and student success at our colleges. Organizational success in the future will require us to challenge our assumptions, question much of what we believe to be true, and accelerate our own learning to embrace changes and models of learning that were impossible to even conceive of let alone consider in the past.
During my time at MVCC, I have seen the College community face various challenges, and in each instance the College has shown a unique ability to synthesize the best of these ideas and national research, and at its own pace, make these ideas our own. We embrace the need for change, and we find a way to make it fit our unique culture. This tempered and considered approach to incorporating best practices has proven to be a hallmark of MVCC’s resilience. We are guided by our values, and we make change our own.
For my first five years at MVCC, I wrote a blog post most every week during the fall and spring semester. It was a way for me to make sense of the College and the community that were so new to me, as well as share my thoughts on what I was learning. For the past seven years, I have written far fewer blog posts, as we’ve gotten into the thick of a great deal of organizational change — and I rechanneled my writing energies into a book titled Competing on Culture: Driving Change in Community Colleges. I am immensely fortunate to have a supportive and visionary Board of Trustees and amazingly talented staff who provide me with the opportunity and mental bandwidth to deeply consider what’s happening in the world around us and clarify a path forward through some great unknowns.
I think I have the beginnings of that path and am once again compelled to post weekly. For the next several weeks, I intend to describe how this wave of disruption is coming together, why organizational culture is the way through and out of the wave for community colleges, and how the culture at MVCC provides insight on the building blocks to create a culture of connection and anticipation that I’m betting will see us through to shore, poised to ride even bigger waves in the future.
It’s Black History Month in the 50th anniversary year of
Martin Luther King Jr.’s death. I recently had the honor of delivering the
keynote address at a memorial luncheon in King’s honor, sponsored by the Mohawk
Valley Frontiers Club. Here is an edited version of that address, which
revisits some interesting aspects of King’s speech that aren’t always widely
known.
While Dr. King’s life and legacy are filled with many
fascinating elements, I have taken a particular interest in his “I Have a Dream” speech. I don’t make passing reference to it; I mean it. In 2013, the
50th anniversary of King’s speech, I downloaded it in its entirety on my iPhone
and put it on a playlist of songs I listen to in quiet moments. The more I’ve
listened to it, the more I've found his words to be like true lyrics. His cadence
creates a beautiful baseline, his inflections and tone hit remarkable notes.
His refrains of “100 years later, Now is the Time, We cannot be satisfied, and
I have a Dream” create beautiful verses of what feels like a 16-minute
masterpiece. I can’t recite the whole speech, but I’ve listened to it so many
times over the years that I can essentially “sing along” from start to finish,
like I do with most songs I listen to in private.
August 28, 1963, was a sun-filled summer day in Washington,
D.C., when an estimated 250,000 individuals gathered for an event that Dr. King
said was “to go down in history, as the greatest demonstration for freedom in
the history of our nation.” It was officially called the “March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom.”Of the 250,000
marchers, an estimated 60,000 (nearly 25 percent) were white, which is partly
why King said “… many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence
here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our
destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound
to our freedom.” That got some of the loudest applause in the whole speech —
there was unity among those at the march.
There were actually 10 speakers that day. I don’t know if
any of you have ever seen the hilarious skit on “Key and Peele” about what
the man scheduled to speak after Dr. King might have said. Can you imagine if
someone had to follow Dr. King? What do you say? It’s a great skit. Fortunately,
no one had to bear that burden; Dr. King was indeed the final speaker that day.
To me, the most fascinating anecdote about King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech is that the “I have a dream” part was improvised. I heard about
this on National Public Radio several years ago and found an interview with
Clarence Jones on the website of the British newspaper, The Guardian. Jones was
a speech writer for Dr. King and would often write the initial draft of his
speeches, as he did for the speech that day in 1963.
The night before the march, Dr. King finished the outline at
about midnight and then edited the draft in longhand. One of the aides who
visited King’s suite that night saw words crossed out three or four times. He
said it looked as though King were writing poetry. King went to sleep at about
4 a.m., giving the text to his aides to print and distribute. The “I have a
dream” section was not in it.
Jones recalls that King was winding up what would have been
a well-received, but by his standards, fairly unremarkable oration. As King was
telling people to go back to their homes in the South, singer Mahalia Jackson,
who performed earlier in the program, shouted: “Tell ’em about the dream,
Martin.” She had seen him deliver the dream refrain in Detroit two months
earlier and was moved by it.
King continued, “Go back to the slums and ghettoes of our
northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.”
Jackson shouted again: “Tell ’em about the dream!”
King continued, “Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends.” Then he grabbed the podium and set his
prepared text to his left. Jones said he turned to the person standing
next to him and said: “These people don't know it, but they’re about to go to church.”
The most famous part of the speech almost never happened.
And in later years, as Dr. King moved to focusing on opposing the Vietnam War and
took up issues like poverty, he became more controversial. From 1965 until his
death, the “I Have a Dream” speech was hardly mentioned. It was only upon his
death that the speech was resurrected and memorialized as the inspirational
beacon it is today.
I personally think that in the same way religious texts are
used as guidance for individual behavior, Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech
serves as guidance for societal behavior in this complex democratic nation
called the United States of America. Just saying those words United States of
America while gathering regular news stories these days can give a person
pause. How united are we when it feels that we as a nation are as divided as
we’ve been since Dr. King’s death?
How is it that hate has become so prevalent? How is it that
misunderstanding has become so common? The internet has amplified our
individual apathy to sift through the massive array of information and sort
fact from fiction. Instead, we often go to our safe spaces and find information
that affirms our own thinking because it’s easy, and we have other stuff to
tend to in our busy lives. This allows half-truths to gain traction and fuel
misunderstanding and hate.
We don’t mention enough that hate is learned. How do we know
this? Because the typical 6-year-old does not naturally hate. Six-year-olds ask
“Why?” — they seek to understand the world around them. The answers they are
given slowly layer one on top of another … answer after question, question
after answer, and with each answer comes an emerging worldview that forms the
child, molds the adolescent, shapes the teenager, and creates the adult, which aligns
their individual and, in turn, societal behavior to Dr. King’s dream … or
not.
As adults, we find it easy to joke about how as teenagers we
think we have all the answers, but that implies we somehow get back to asking
questions and learning as adults. The most important part of this is that as
adults, we need to rekindle that childhood curiosity of asking why: Why are
certain things the way they are? Why do others think the way they do? Why do
we, as individuals, think the way we do? Where is the common ground?
How can we find the middle way to collaborate and find
solutions to problems big and small? That is how we understand each other and
move forward together.
I believe curiosity comes from education, and that education
is a fundamental principle to democracy fueled by an educated citizenry. I was
inspired a few short years ago when President Obama and others were begging the
question if the time was right to expand our baseline of a free, compulsory
education from a high school diploma to a two-year associate degree. He noted
how the farmers of the 1890s thought it was crazy to require children to attend
school until they were 18 — with the advent of free secondary education, the
miracles of the 20th century, sometimes called the American century, were made
possible. As technology and society change, where will America’s place in the
world be in the 21st century?
A recent study surveyed parents of high school students.
They were asked to rank the importance of a college education relative to the
benefits that so many of us academics see in education. Research shows that
college graduates live longer, are healthier, are more likely to vote and be
engaged in their communities, experience greater levels of overall happiness
and well-being, have more stable home lives and families, and numerous other
benefits. All of those things paled in comparison to the reason these parents
wanted their children to go to college, which was to get a good job. This
parallels results of the Gallup World Survey, which included 250,000
respondents in more than 100 countries. What was the most important thing
people wanted in life? A good-paying job — no matter the country. More and more
in today’s modern world, a good-paying job comes with some level of college
education. The reality for the foreseeable future is that college has
increasingly become a precondition for upward mobility.
As we contemplate that inherent linkage between education
beyond high school and securing a good-paying job, we should consider that the
national poverty rate has not moved since 1965. The percentage of Americans
living in poverty in 1965 was roughly 15 percent. It may vary a percent one way
or the other periodically, but the poverty rate remains, to this day, roughly
15 percent of all Americans.
This stubborn percentage seems inextricably wrapped around
the axle of our society. It is tangled in the fabric of our federal and state
laws and policies. It is knotted in the strands of our educational system and
tightened by the wrenches in our legal system — a system that, according to the
Center for American Progress, increased incarceration rates 700 percent between
1970 and 2005, and, without fundamental change, will incarcerate one in three
black men at some point in their lifetime.
When we remember Dr. King, it’s important to remember that
he believed in the power of education. He believed in education as the primary
tool to empower individuals and communities to untangle the complex, inhibiting
reality of situational and generational poverty in this country. Additional
education also empowers individuals to think critically, solicit opinions and
ideas from others to challenge their own way of thinking, to find common ground
and solve problems together. And yet surprisingly, the conversation about a
college education in this country today is questioning its very value, and
policies in several states are moving education from a public right to a
private good — available only to the few who can afford it.
In the context of today, it would be easy to feel that we
seem more pointed away from than toward Dr. King’s dream. And although he often
said in later years that his dream had become a nightmare, Dr. King himself
never gave up on that dream. On Christmas Eve 1967, at Ebenezer Baptist Church
in Atlanta, he told his congregation:
"I am personally the victim of deferred dreams … but in
spite of that, I close today by saying I still have a dream, because, you know,
you can't give up in life. If you lose hope, somehow you lose that vitality
that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps
you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream."
May those words inspire us in the same way that Dr. King’s
Mountaintop speech in Memphis did the night before he was assassinated. You may
recall that he took us on a mystical journey through time to tell God that
given the chance, he would rather live in his time than any other time in the
history of the world. There in Memphis in April of 1968, he said, “now that's a
strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up. The nation is
sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around. That's a strange statement.
But I know, somehow, that only-when-it-is-dark-enough … can you see the stars.”
For many of us, in different ways, we could likely say the same
thing. The world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land;
confusion all around. But I hope you agree with Dr. King that somehow, only
when it is dark enough can you see the stars.
So let us live in our time today. Let us join together in
hope. Let us work together with vitality to stay the course and fight for the
inches while we hold true to the vision of the miles we must gain to move those
stubbornly unjust numbers of poverty, incarceration, and educational
attainment. May we find courage and resilience in knowing that it lies within
us, in that unvarnished 6-year-old self we each carry within us, that which can
animate and bring to life the dream of social and economic justice, equity and
inclusion — and through our individual and collective actions each and every
day we can honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his memory.
My general background can be found here.
My blog presents me with an opportunity to give a more non-traditional profile of myself. I have listed my strategic themes, or strengths, as identified through the StrengthsFinder instrument from the Gallup organization. 1. Maximizer: "Excellence, not average, is your measure. Transforming something strong into something superb takes just as much effort but is much more thrilling." 2. Strategic: You can sort through the clutter and find the best route. It is a distinct way of thinking that allows you to see patterns where others simply see complexity." 3. Arranger: "When faced with a complex situation involving many factors, you enjoy managing all of the variables, aligning and realigning them until you are sure you have arranged them in the most productive configuration possible." 4. Learner: "You have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve." 5. Includer: "You accept others and show awareness of those who feel left out and make an effort to include them.."
