Wall of Achievement!!

U City  is doing a wonderful job, with the Returning Artists Program. This program encourages many students who are, probably, interested in the arts to proceed and others to do better in school. However I am reminded of a quote about the NCAA "Most of us that participate in SPORTS become professionals in something else." I hope I quoted this correctly.This program brings back to mind a conversation I had in 1973 with Tansie Mayer, when he was the chief counselor at the . He was reciting statistics about the numbers of graduates who went on to college, 85%. I asked, how many were successful, at least for a couple of years or four years. Of course he didn't know the answer, nor did I expect him to, but wouldn't it be of great benefit to us in tweaking our curriculum from knowledge.

Baseball players who hit 300 or great players, and there are other professions where we don't expect 100% efficiency but if its your surgeon, attorney, pilot, CPA, builders of the airplane you are about to fly on and many other professions, you want that 100%. Statistics play a very important role in our lives and knowing if our students, that we ae teaching towards becoming successful in their life pursuits, are doing it makes all of the difference in what and how we continue doing this.

In 1973 there wasn't all of the social media we have today, so it was much more difficult to track many of our graduates. Some may say we don't need to know if our school is doing a good job, because to graduate from high school ends our job. This may have been the desired end 50 years ago, or longer but not today. America cannot afford this, we need these students to be able to know much more than us.

Vision is important to all of us, and particularly for children growing up, they have to visualize themselves as able to accomplish something in order to achieve it. I initiated along with the U City PTO the U City Academic Letter in order to stimulate more interest in academics. We wanted to motivate them like the Athletic Letter seemed to do athletes.

I think our schools could use another shot of encouragement and motivation for our students.I am suggesting A Wall Of Achievement, which will show some of the thousands of our former students (pictures along with some narrative about their achievements) who have achieved. Former students who are now Doctors, Attorneys, Teachers, School Board Members, Legislators, Entrepreneurs, Computer Experts, Engineers, Graphic Artists, Musicians, Fine Artists, Barbers, etal. This wall will remind our students, everyday, of positive achievements they can make.