Donel Bisesi, my golf coach at Martinsville High School in Indiana, was my personal hero. He died last month . I was saddened, but I realized that he had been fighting a long battle against cancer. When we think about those who have been so influential in our lives, we need to reach out to them. We all recognize that reaching out and doing a nice thing for others is important, but sometimes we do not know how important our small act of kindness might be.

I was working with my wife to clean out the garage and ran across some memorabilia from my childhood. We found some junior high and high school clippings, pictures, yearbooks, and report cards that my father had kept over the years. I work hard at being an upbeat and positive person, but after breathing the dust and going down memory lane, I was feeling more than a little melancholy when we sat down to dinner. I told my wife that junior high was not a very positive time for me at school or at home. I sat there and thought about what had made the difference between my junior high and high school experiences, because my home situation for several of those years had been the same. I realized that it was not one of my academic teachers, but my golf coach, who had made the difference.  
 
I was an inexperienced freshman in whom the coach saw potential. Coach Bisesi was my personal hero who, through his time and dedication, changed the next four years of my life. I sent him a letter and shared how much he meant to me. The letter traveled from Florida to Indiana and back to Florida where Coach Bisesi was wintering and going through radiation treatment. He gave me a call on the day he received the letter to tell me he read it over and over again.
 
I shared this story in the book A Positive Manifesto. As soon as the book was published I signed a copy with a personal message and sent it to Coach Bisesi’s home. I never heard from him again, but I did hear from his wife. She called to tell me that he was very weak and was going into hospice care. She called on the day he passed to tell me he showed the book and the message to every person who came into his room the last few days of his life and made them read what I had written about him.
 
When we reach out to express gratitude, we never know how important it will be in the recipient’s life. I really cannot grasp the positive effects of such a small act, because good actions are magnified beyond what we can imagine and in ways we could never dream. Find and thank the Donel Bisesis in your life. 

​In his book In Defense of a Liberal Education, author and CNN host Fareed Zakaria makes the point that a liberal arts education has been demeaned by politicians and the media while the price of higher education has soared. Due to the higher costs, parents, want to see college as vocational preparation and immediate job placement upon graduation. Zakaria’s case is that a liberal education is the better preparation for a modern life filled with uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and volatility. Liberal education is about critical and independent thinking, writing, and representing yourself in the modern world where the only certainty is change. Essentially, Zakaria posits that the solution to the problems of a liberal education is more and better liberal education.
 
While this book is not necessarily focused on K–12 education, it offers an insightful analysis of America’s many school successes and limitations as compared to international systems. In short, Zakaria argues that though American schools are often ranked in the low to mid twenties (out of the top thirty-one industrial nations) in math, science, and reading, the United States also ranks number one in the number of publicly listed high technology companies it has. Sweden ranks fifth, and Israel, tenth. The rankings are reversed when it comes to the percentage of GDP each of these three countries puts into research and development investments. Israel is first in venture capital investments, with the United States second and Sweden fourth.
 
What does all of this mean? Zakaria argues that the United States is one of the most innovative countries in the world. How did it get this way? He explains that in the three countries under discussion, “the work culture is non-hierarchical and merit based. All operate like ‘young’ countries, with energy and dynamism. All three are open societies, happy to let in the world’s ideas, goods, and services. And finally, they are all places where people are confident—a characteristic that can actually be measured.”
 
Studies reveal that other countries keep students in their education systems longer than the United States, and that curriculum and instruction is more rigorous, emphasizing math, technology, and science in order to pass national exams. But we in the United States better prepare students to think creatively, to problem solve, to argue persuasively, and to manage.
 
I believe establishing clarity around a district’s purpose and core values is essential to promoting students’ aspirations to become “the architects of their own learning.” These aspirations can begin early in school and must be nurtured as students progress through their education and become more responsible as they define their goals, understand their options and interests, and ultimately make commitments to accomplish their goals.