ACADEMIC HELPS
Making A’s at the Next Level!
Potty Training
(With this program we’ve witnessed scores of students go from F’s to A’s.)
Back Drop:
I’m in Cleveland during my rookie season and have my young cousin Gerard living with me at the time. Gerard was a Prop 48 acdemic casualty and the two of us had agreed to get him up to Cleveland so that we could work on his SAT test scores and get him in the best physical shape of his life. Then we’d work together and try and find him a walk-on opportunity with an area college football program.
One Tuesday (NFL’s rest day) I get a call from my Uncle Ducie who lived down in Miami. My uncle began to share with me that African Americans “suffer a lot and miss out on a lot of opportunities because for the most part, as a people, we don’t read very well.” He went on to say that African Americans don’t practice reading enough, and as a people we’re not as good at it as we should be. “Think about it, Dannyboy (he didn’t realize I had dropped the nickname after elementary school), in order to be good at something you practice it, right? Black people practice sports and they become good at them. You practiced your football and you became good at it (I don't know if Marty Schottenheimer agreed with that comment). Anything we practice, we become good at.”
His words had me stoned at this point. They immediately took me back to my own SAT scores. Though I was a high school honor graduate (tied for 6th in the class but really wasn’t keeping score), I had done poorly on the English portion of my own SAT, the same area wher Gerard had suffered. I remembered being a very poor reader, a sleep reader actually. Reading was such a chore that I could only last a couple of paragraphs at best and I’d fall asleep. I remembered having to go over and over text just to try and get meaning out of these written words. Sometimes it seemed almost impossible because this stuff in the books was different from what we spoke at home (or in my Meigs, Georgia neighborhood).
The stuff in the books was totally different from the English that was spoken where I came from. It was tough to work through, so I only did it when I had to and did just enough to get by. It’s sad to say, but by the time I graduated high school I had read a total of two books. (Yeah, 2!).
Ironically there was a big push during those days to teach “Ebonics” so that African Americans would have better opportunities to succeed on standardized tests. I didn’t think that was the answer at the time, but I knew I struggled with reading. Don’t get me wrong. Given enough time I could make sense of what was in front of me. But, standardized stuff always has a time limit and I always seemed to run out of time.
Anyway, I was trying to think this thing through, had all these thoughts running through my brain and Uncle Ducie is still giving me the wisdom (pouring it on thick). “You got to practice, Dannyboy. The only reason you’re not good at reading is because you don’t practice (By the way, I never told him that I wasn't a good reader).” At this point my mind was on my grandma (his mom) who would always have me come over to her house to read her mail for her. I’d do a lot of the same for my mom (who was a high school graduate) and we’d always work to make sense out of whatever either of them had received.
“You know, everywhere there are words somebody has left a message. We have lived free in this country for so many years but we keep missing the messages. It could be simple stuff or it could be things that could change a person’s destiny. But if we don’t take the time to read the message that somebody left we may never get it.
"Dannyboy (I always hated that nickname) you’ve got to practice reading. All those signs on the highway are opportunities for you to practice reading. You should never pass another sign without trying to get the message that somebody put there for you. Do that and you will become more and more familiar with written words and your reading will get better. What you really need to do is start practicing for five minutes a day. Put some kind of book or magazine in your bathroom on top of the toilet. When you are in there you are going to get at least five minutes of uninterrupted time that you can practice your reading. Your mama won’t even bother you in the bathroom, boy. You’ll get better.”
Needless to say I took his words to heart. 4 years later, through The Christ in Sports Foundation, the five minutes of Potty Training became a key component in helping us raise student grades and test scores in my home community.
How it works:
Take the stuff off the back of the toilet. Place some form of reading material in its place. The best you can give yourself is the best selling book in the history of the world (Good guess, the Bible!). The second best option for students is to take whatever subject you are having the most problems in and place materials (even class notes or note cards) on the toilet so that you can study them.
Just as Ducie told me, you will have this uninterrupted time to practice. If someone does call for you and you say, “I’m in the bathroom,” they always give you the time. So, the time will be there, use it! You will get better at whatever subject you choose during your potty training time. My friend Jamison, a second-year college student at the time of this writing, was about to set the record for F’s in the fourth and fifth grades. Potty training worked for him. It will work for you.
Welcome to the Next Level!
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