After spending a day trading emails with the head of the Staples Copy Center, I finally got it right. As I was preparing business cards, 10 to a sheet, I was trying to match it with the store’s cutting machine. That layout allowed me to place a different quote, generally pertaining to education, at the bottom of each card on the sheet.
So I have since discovered that, when I hand a card over, the recipient frequently scans straight to the quote. Just this week when I gave a card to someone at a college alumni event, she replied, “Oh, I love Marva Collins.”
Right away I realized that the card’s quote was a simple truth: “There is a brilliant child locked inside every student.”
That quote came to mind again last night as I finally watched the hit movie The Blind Side, which is a true story adapted from Michael Lewis’ book of the same name.
As Lewis explained in the video below, the arc of Michael Oher’s academic growth was more astonishing than his widely-acclaimed gridiron development, thus serving as a testament to the possibilities of every child given advocacy and support, the passports to success.
Explicit in the movie was that Michael had a teacher who saw his potential and became his advocate. After modeling strategies and sharing their success with her peers, she then challenged and influenced others to adopt her practices. The result was transformation of Michael and those around him.
The Blind Side probably focused too much on the family and how it ’saved’ Michael, when it might have been more interesting to view it from the young man’s perspective. But in the end, the movie is an uplifting one and the story of Oher is one that we believe can be replicated over and over again.
Noted philosopher
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