Some Words of Wisdom from Bill Gates

I am not sure just how "recent" this is, but I think it bears reading if you never have read it before. Bill Gates knows a bit about life, making money and winning and losing. I think it also does a nice job of going at some of the prevailing attitudes about making sure everyone is happy in school and that, like in youth sports, everyone gets a trophy. Not everyone wins, and there are reasons why. Some of them are discussed below.

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this!
Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things
they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-
good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with
no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in
the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair - get used to it!
Rule 2 : The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will
expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3 : You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school.
You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4 : If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5 : Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your
Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine
about your mistakes, learn from them..
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they
are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your
clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were.
So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's
generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but
life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and
they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer.
This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off
and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do
that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually
have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

A Glossary of Abbreviations

Here is a basic glossary of some of the things that have been Tweeted about on Twitter pages. Please feel free to add.

LC: The Norton High School Leadership Council
T3: The Tri-Town Drug and Alchohol Task Force (Norton, Mansfield, Foxboro)
OCB: Old Country Buffet: A vile place I will never enter but where some want to go for dinner.
NHS: Norton High School
MS: Norton Middle School
URI: University of Rhode Island where we use the challenge course.
TPC: The Deutche Bank Open Golf Tournament held at the TPC Boston course in Norton
RBT: Research for Better Teaching. A Skillful Teacher course required of teachers in Norton

Those are the major ones, but I suspect there will be more. Please help.

Leadership Council Ambigram

Here is the ambigram for Leadership Council Mr. Vitelli had made up. Your thoughts?

Control

I am a take charge person. I like to make the decisions and delegate who is to do what. I do so because I know that I am good at it, and I have a pretty good sense of the big picture. Plus, I do not rattle easily.
Goal for me this summer and next school year, however, is to help foster some of this taking charge ability in others. I need to help others become more willing to step up to the plate, as it were, and make decisions. I have tried to do this a bit at team building activities, and I purposely stay out of the student group at Tri Town Task Force meetings. I also need to do it better with adults.
This year I will have a new assistant principal and three administrative interns working under me. While they will require a lot of guidance, I see a need to help foster their sense of what it really means to lead so that I truly am guiding more and showing the absolute one right way less. Should be interesting.
In some cases, however, I will have to be more directive with some staff so that I am more sure that they are doing what they need to do.

Summer Reading Update

I have finished, "The Scarecrow". Good read.
I am halfway through "Cemetery Dance". I would recommend it if you have read through this series. I would imagine you would be quite lost if you have not. I think that this will be the last book in this series I read as I no longer really care about the characters involved.
I have started, "Rules of Thumb". Too soon to tell yet if it is as valuable as I was led to believe. Of course, I had my doubts about, "The Global Achievement Gap" and that turned out to be a very special book.

Summer Reading

Interestingly, to me, a majority of the people who responded to the most recent poll said that the thing which would help them most to do summer reading would be a forum. Here's your chance. Suggest a book to read, and I will start a forum both here and on Twitter. The book that is most suggested in this space wins. Go.

New Leadership Council Logo

Check it out. tell what you think. Thanks, Sam Baker.