Rolemodeling in the Albuquerque Public Schools

If you go to APS' award winning website and search for role modeling, you will get 25 results, link.
If you search for role models, you' will get 250, link.
If you search for Character Counts!, You will get 232, link.
If you search the website for Character Counts! role models, you will find 19.

Search the building for an actual role model, you won't find a one.

Character Counts! is the manifestation of an effort to grow character (in young people).  The  Pillars of  Character Counts!, link, are a nationally recognized, accepted and respected code of ethical standards of conduct.

Students in the Albuquerque Public Schools are expected to "model and promote" the Pillars of Character Counts!; trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship.

What does "model and promote" mean exactly?

Take for example, the tenet of accountability.  It's arguably the most important tenet of any standards of conduct.  There isn't a whit of difference between the highest standards of conduct and the lowest if there is honest accountability to neither.

Character Counts! promotes the acceptance of accountability.  It promotes the embrace of accountability.  Accountability is why we repeat an oft told fable about a young man, a shiny new hatchet and a prized cherry tree.

Frankly, we tell the story because we can't point to real people actually modeling accountability to meaningful standards of conduct. We have to tell students to consider what George Washington did because we can't say "look at that person there, see how they are holding themselves honestly accountable to meaningful standards of conduct.

For the most part, the only role models are role modeling using power and influence to escape accountability.

In the leadership of the APS, there is not one person willing to hold themselves honestly accountable as a role model of the Pillars of Character Counts!; APS' student standards of conduct.

Not one person.

Despite the fact that The Pillars of Character Counts! are the student standards of conduct; their senior most administrative role model, APS Supt Winston Brooks, during his sworn deposition, link, demonstrated he has no idea what they are; he doesn't even know they're called Pillars.





The senior most executive role model of student standard of conduct School Board President Marty Esquivel is anything but a role model of actual accountability to the Pillars of Character Counts!.

If the Pillars of Character Counts! are standards of conduct that are too high for leadership of the APS, even for those few hours during the day when they are expecting students to hold themselves accountable to those standards, then they are standards that are too high for students.

One cannot reasonably expect children to hold themselves accountable to higher standards of conduct than their adult role models.

"Do as I say, not as I" do has never motivated anyone to hold themselves accountable to higher standards.  For the same reasons that it has never worked, it never will.

If we really want children to grow into adults who embrace character and courage and honor, someone has to show them what it looks like.

Every generation expects the next generation to be the first generation to hold itself honestly accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law.

If we want children to hold themselves honestly accountable to higher standards of conduct than the law, someone has to show them what it looks like.

"The law" is the lowest standards of conduct acceptable to civilized human beings.  It is the standards of conduct that every higher standard is higher than.

Role modeling is by definition conspicuous.
Inconspicuous role modeling is oxymoronic.

We used to give kids t-shirts when they completed their Character Counts! training.   On its front and back it read;

Stand up for what you believe in
even if you're standing alone.

A child standing up for what they believe in should never be standing alone.  There should be an adult behind them offering encouragement; someone beside them sharing the burden and a role model in front of them showing them what it looks like.

Character is taught by personal example.  Period.

The "leadership"of the APS had three choices;

1. raise their own standards of conduct to the same standards they establish and enforce upon students.
2. lower students standards to standards low enough that the leadership of the APS can find the character and the courage to actually hold themselves honestly accountable to them, or
3. continue to stonewall and hope nobody realizes what is going on.

They chose and continue to chose option 3.

Journal editor Kent Walz

They will continue to stonewall for as long as their friends in the media will allow it, and there is no change in the wind.

Do students in the Albuquerque Public Schools have a right to role models of accountability to the same standards of conduct they establish and enforce upon students?

Does it make any difference?

To anybody?




photos Mark Bralley