Commentary: Confusing Failure with Success

By Louis A. Zona

YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – What is not to love about a song, once popular, about a red robin bob-bob-bobbing along? It goes like this:

When the red, red robin comes bob-bob-bobbing along.

There will be no more stopping when he starts singing his sweet old song.

Get up, get up you sleepy head. Get up, get out of bed. Get up. The sun is red.

Live, love, laugh and be happy.

The song reminds me of my very first teaching job in a public school. A note went out to all teachers including new hires about a faculty meeting the superintendent called. We met in the auditorium of the junior high school where the county superintendent greeted us.

He urged us to maintain a good attitude, just like the little robin in the song. With that he said, “Let us all sing my favorite song, ‘When the red, red robin …’ ”

Can you picture several hundred teachers singing about a little red robin? As a new teacher back then, I wondered if the world had gone crazy as I looked around the auditorium of singing teachers including the math and science instructors.

And boy, was the superintendent of schools one happy guy as we all sang about his favorite bird with most of us singing off key and making up lyrics to a song that was popular in Grandma’s day.

What the school superintendent was obviously trying to do was to get all of us together and going in the same direction. He followed up the singing about the red, red robin with a talk on the art of Claude Monet, particularly his many paintings of haystacks.

I wondered just what could be learned from Monet’s haystack series. It finally made sense to me that all children, like all haystacks, are different. It is not possible to treat every child similarly since each child has experiences unlike those of other children.

The superintendent asked us to be aware of these differences and to create lesson plans that underscore those dissimilarities.

No, kids are not the same. Some may have parents who work closely with their children while others are not as involved. Some youngsters cannot count on having a good breakfast before school while others attend school blessed with a wholesome breakfast.

That day, as I listened to the school administrator singing about red robins and discussing Monet’s haystack paintings, I heard a brilliant approach to better understand the significant role of the teacher as well as engaged parents.

As I think back on my days teaching in public schools, I often remember teaching in a high school where the principal was, shall we say, neither creative nor spontaneous.

I oversaw an art club made up of high school students who often asked if they could stay after school to finish projects. I recall that often I stayed after school for several hours to work with the kids on various projects. I got home from school as late as seven o’clock.

One morning I entered the school a little after 8:30 following a long night of working with the students. “Mr. Zona, you’re late,” scolded the principal, Mr. Berry, as he pointed to the clock and yelled at me about being three minutes late.

“But Mr. Berry, I was here until seven o’clock last night working with the students. I figured that you would understand.”

“What I understand, Mr. Zona, is that you are to be in your classroom at 8:30 a.m. and not 8:33. If it happens again, your pay will be docked.”

I understand to this day that Mr. Berry was just doing his job. But he was shortsighted. And he lost a devoted teacher who would go on to teach at the college level, collaborating with future teachers.

The episode with Principal Berry is one of the only negative events to occur in my years of teaching in public schools. It is a wonderful profession and a spot where good solid teaching can make a difference in the lives of young people.

But I learned in my time in public schools that involving parents in the process of educating youth is as important as having caring teachers. It is a team approach that works every time.

I think back to an episode of the “Andy Griffith Show” when Opie had failing grades. That shook up Andy, Barney and all the neighbors.

You would think that it was the end of the world. Andy believes that Opie’s failing had to do with his presence on the football team. In the end, Andy realizes that the answer has little to do with football but more with Dad’s faith in his son and encouragement.

We humans can go only as far as our talents can take us. We all want to reach for the gold ring and want our children to grab it as well. In the end, though, we are able to grab hold of it only if our arms are long enough and our desire to claim it is strong enough.

And there certainly is nothing wrong with at least trying to own the ring even if we know in our heart that our limitations just might make it impossible to succeed.

Opie soon learned the truth about his abilities and eventually learned that nature had limited his success but there is nothing wrong with trying and failing.

But is that really failure if we are giving it our all?

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.