Five Reads For Friday February 19th

I have not posted my five reads on Friday post for a few weeks. So some of these blogposts or articles may be a few weeks old and I wanted to share before they gather too much dust in my inbox.

One of the best things I read over the last few weeks was a blogpost by Phoebe Wright entitled The Art of Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing. Phoebe Wright is a professional runner in the Seattle area and this post just hit on a lot of things I had been thinking about. Our sports society obsesses  -- and I am certainly guilty of this -- about all the little things that might give us some sort of competitive edge. But this obsession seems to minimize the importance of the most important things in your training which Wright believes are the work you have put in and your mindset. I always remind kids I coach, the most important thing is showing up to practice every day. It is amazing to me how many things get straightened out with the daily consistent habit of putting in the work. So lets remind ourselves whatever we do today, that the focus should be on the main thing!

As we all know now our Head of School Tom Doar is stepping down this year. His greatest influence on my teaching and coaching is his emphasis on the importance of building relationships. Mr. Doar is big on relationships and having strong ones. But we all know that some people are better at building them than others. So what are the habits and practices of those that are good at this. Greetings and goodbyes are aspects of relationship building that I happen to be interested in. Doug Lemov of UnCommon Schools wrote an interesting post entitled Adapting Threshold to an Arrival Greeting about how greetings can be used to build relationships.

There was a terrific article in the NYT in the last week about the issues at the University of North Carolina over the last decade plus. There are all sorts of awful and troubling aspects to the academic scandal involving false academic credit. Again proving the pursuit of winning and winning itself can hide many issues. But what I took away from this article was the influence of Coach Dean Smith. Even though there may have be a small overlap with the end of Smith's career no one believes Smith ever knew about it. But even greater was the positive influence Smith had on not just his players but the whole institution. Dean Smith's Shadow Looms over UNC

We all want kids to be happy. Sadly even in our community many are not. There are lots of things that schools try to help kids who are struggling. But I think these 6 practices are practices at home that might help a lot.
6 Ways to Raise Happier Kids

I passed this article around to a number of my friends yesterday -- yes, via email. I know people in the business world that get far more email than I do. I have friends who tell me they get up in the middle of the night feeling they should write a couple more emails.  That doesn't happen to me, but I get over 15 thousand emails a year and last year I wrote a little over 5200 emails. And I am sure there is someone who feels I should have written a few more as there is some dangling issue out there. I worry, though, about three things with email. Is it the most productive use of anyones time? Does it help or hurt the creation a positive productive work culture? How does it affect my work and family relationships when I am feeling guilty about the number of emails sitting in my inbox? I recently got the following auto-reply from a coach I respect a lot. "Thank you for your email & taking the time get in touch. Rest assured, your email made it to my inbox & I do intent to get to it, eventually. Currently, I am focused on doing the work to better my craft, so I don't check my digital inbox too often (maybe once every 4 - 12 days). Therefore, my response may be delayed. If what you have to communicate is urgent please call or text me directly & I will reply with much more immediacy." In no way will I be doing that, but it did make me think about what is most important in my job. Email is probably not going away any time soon, but I think it is always worth thinking about its effect on us. A Modest Proposal: Eliminate Email -- Harvard Business Review