Mike
Munson -
Social Sciences / Board Member - mmunson@treknorth.org
 When
I was growing up most everything that stirred passion in me
had something to do with sports. Depending on the season, the
fate of my mood on the success I felt with whatever team sport
I was involved in. At times I'd come home in full pout, toss
my bag down and try to complain about losing or not getting
enough playing time. My dad had a very simple and consistent
response: "if you want to play more, play better. If you
want to play better, work harder." Then, depending on
the season, he'd grab a bag of baseballs or hockey pucks and
drag me outside to work on whatever weakness he thought needed
fixing. He wasn't really much of talker and didn't spend a
lot of time explaining why it was ok or not to feel upset about
things, sports or otherwise. By nature he was more a doer.
If something wasn't going right, he figured people should just
do what's necessary to fix it. As I’ve grown older, I’m
no longer surprised at how I've acquired his habits.
I was in college when he gave me the first of many gifts that
acknowledged my career as a teacher. His first "teacher
gift" was A Nation At Risk, the 1983 report from the National
Commission on Excellence in Education. This probably doesn't
seem like an unqualified embrace of my chosen career but it
was. I recognized it as an indication of acceptance because
it meant he'd turned away from his hope that I’d follow
his footsteps into the accountants' world of balance sheets
and financial planning. Nation at Risk was a gloomy, yet urgent,
text. It detailed how public education in America teetered
on the edge of irrelevance. It predicted dire consequences
for the nation at large unless the problems faced, and sometimes
created, by public schools were not remedied. My dad wasn't
a pessimist; he was a bit of a perfectionist who was perhaps
puzzled by a son who got lost in tales of history on his way
to choosing a career, but that booklet was his communication
of faith that I could make a difference. I know he laid that
report out as a challenge just as he repeatedly laid a baseball
on the inside corner if he thought I needed to work on pulling
an inside fastball.
When I think of all the material things he gave me over the
years, I realize that A Nation at Risk is the one thing that
has influenced every moment of my interaction with students.
Its' introductory finding that a majority of Americans had
lost faith in the ability of public schools to provide a meaningful
education rings in my mind as loudly today as it did 24 years
ago. I believe the reports conclusion was wrong. I don’t
think Americans have ever really come close to giving-up on
education as an institution. Most people I've discussed this
with over the years agree that educating our young people has
always been too important a task to be neglected. Schools and
teachers are far too vital to be left with stagnant, declining,
insufficient, and dated resources. TrekNorth is an innovative,
academic, and personal school that gives meaning to students
who learn to work hard, and happily, toward a brighter future.
And I’m very proud to be part of it.
Early in this century, as the Hapsburg domains surrounding
his native land crumbled under the weight of forces the old
empire couldn't escape, the poet Rilke wrote:
I am too alone in the world, and not alone enough
to make every moment holy...
I want my own will, and I want simply to be with my will
As it goes toward action,
and in the silent, sometimes hardly moving times
when something is coming near,
I want to be with those who know secret things
or else alone.
Our time is neither silent nor hardly moving, but something
is definitely coming near, a future that many of us adults
could not have imagined during our own school days. The power
of science and technology are impacting this age in a way that
historians of the future will label as revolutionary. Our children
need to be equipped with the tools, the knowledge, and passions
that will allow them every possible advantage in dealing with
the complexities of the world they'll soon inherit. TrekNorth
provides a core curriculum, grounded on Advanced Placement
and the College Board’s Vertical Program of academic
skill-building. Our goal is straight forward; college preparation.
When I think back on the message of A Nation at Risk and consider
the recent No Child Left Behind legislation, I am as eager
and thrilled to face the challenges to public education as
I was 24 years ago. I remember how it felt to get it right
when I’d turn on that inside pitch, proof that if one
wants to get better, one needs to work harder. What that means
is that we all, old and young, need encouragement to engage
our lives fully. Proper schooling gives this to us. This fact
is the TrekNorth is her. We are a community of teachers, learners,
and adventurers with our minds and eyes filled with the possibilities
of an interesting and changing world and a very large life
to be lived. We know there is good work to be done.
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