Feb 3, 2017

Learning From Mistakes


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My dad always said that it takes a lifetime to build a good reputation and only a moment to destroy it. I’m sure everyone’s parents had a similar phrase that they shared with their children.

As a school superintendent with 115,000 students, nearly every day at least one student will make a poor decision. As an organization dedicated to the development of young men and women, how should we react?

I’ve always believed there are two steps necessary to address a poor decision:

  1. Consequence: When students break the rules, there should be a fair and appropriate consequence for the students’ actions.
  2. Education: As educators, we have a duty and responsibility to use poor decisions as teachable moments for our students. In cooperation with our parents, it is our job to help students learn and grow from their mistakes.  

There are no “throwaway” young people! As parents and educators, we have been given the responsibility to nurture our children and help them become productive adults. We have 115,000 young people and each individual student is important to the CFISD community. This community believes that there should be consequences for a student’s actions, but learning from that action is even more important. 

~ Mark Henry, Ed.D.

4 comments:

  1. While I appreciate the reinforcement of the topic of this blog, I find it uninformative.
    Being a part of a large school district, it would be more informative to myself as a parent, if current events were shared with me. In order for me to do my part as a parent to help my child learn and grow from mistakes or make it a teachable moment, I need a general overview of what is happening in our district. There are many ways to share current events at schools without overstepping privacy and political boundaries. Now I have to search the world wide web to see if CyFair ISD made the news!

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    Replies
    1. Yea, it made the news Tina but not the way you and I would have liked...

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  2. I've just moved to the UK and the situation that happened at Cy Ranch is in newspapers here in England. So shameful especially since my daughter graduated from ranch a few years ago. People over here are saying "don't they teach these kids history about what that mad man did?" I'm embarrassed cause I can honestly say "no, no they don't". Punishment should be classes on the holocaust and a visit to the holocaust museum. Those images never leave you. The whole world now knows what Cy Ranch did and paints all of Texas like that. Smh

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  3. Remember this? https://youtu.be/EvICz0oZxyA

    Students should learn that making a music video doesn't permanently excuse them from practicing kindness, compassion and acceptance. I agree that there are no throwaway kids, but the actions of these young people makes me wonder what prompted these children to develop such throwaway attitudes towards others. I hope their parents are brought in for discipline as well.

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