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INSPIRATIONAL PAGES
BLUEBERRIES
Share this with your school and the people who think a teacher is
totally responsible for test results:
The Blueberry Story
by Jamie Robert Vollmer
I stood before an auditorium filled with outraged teachers who were
becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their
precious 90 minutes of in-service training. Their initial icy glares had turned to
restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.
I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public
schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous
in the middle-1980s when People Magazine chose its blueberry flavor as the
"Best Ice Cream in America."
I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change;
they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the
Industrial Age and out of step with the needs of our emerging "knowledge society."
Second, educators were a major part of the problem: They resisted
change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a
bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to
produce quality. Zero defects! Total Quality Management! Continuous
improvement!
In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced-equal parts ignorance
and arrogance. As soon as I finished, a woman's hand shot up. She appeared
polite, pleasant. She was, in fact, a razor-edged, veteran high school
English teacher who had been waiting to unload.
She began quietly, "We are told, sir, that you manage a company that
makes good ice cream."
I smugly replied, "Best ice cream in America, ma'am."
"How nice," she said. "Is it rich and smooth?"
"Sixteen percent butterfat," I crowed.
"Premium ingredients?" she inquired. "Super-premium! Nothing but
triple-A." I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.
"Mr. Vollmer," she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised
to the sky, "when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an
inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?"
In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I was dead
meat, but I wasn't going to lie. "I send them back."
"That's right!" she barked, "and we can never send back our
blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused,
frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with attention
deficit hyperactivity disorder, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English
as their second language. We take them all. Every one. And that, Mr. Vollmer,
is why it's not a business. It's school."
In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aides,
custodians, and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, "Yeah!
Blueberries! Blueberries!"
And so began my long transformation.
Since then, I have visited hundreds of schools. I have learned that a
school is not a business. Schools are unable to control the quality of
their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a
reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling horde of
disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO
screaming into the night.
None of this negates the need for change. We must change what, when,
and how we teach to give all children maximum opportunity to thrive in a
post-industrial society. But educators cannot do this alone; these
changes can occur only with the understanding, trust, permission, and active
support of the surrounding community. For the most important thing I have
learned is that schools reflect the attitudes, beliefs, and health of the
communities they serve, and therefore, to improve public education means more than
changing our schools, it means changing America.
-Thanks to Jamie Robert Vollmer, a former business executive and attorney, is
now a keynote presenter and consultant who works to increase community
support for public schools.
He lives in Fairfield, Iowa
