We Break the Rules
We break the rules. On purpose. Pretty regularly.
The first year of Everybody Matters, Franco needed to move to a different school for special services.
Franco’s mother was the opposite of happy about that and stated rather forcefully, “No! Absolutely not. Franco has Everybody Matters here and he can not move unless he gets Everybody Matters at the new school!”
Everybody Matters was not at the new school.
The Principal turned to me imploringly, “Can you follow him to the new school?”
"Absolutely." I replied.
One hundred percent of the shocked faces in the meeting whirled my way with someone squeaking out in confusion, “You can do that?”
I nodded, “I can do whatever I want. It’s my program.”
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There was a stunned silence and then we all kind of laughed. A realization hit - there is no committee. There is no council. There is no red tape. There is no hurdle. There is no ridiculous rule keeping me from being able to do the right thing. The right thing is for the intern to follow Franco to the new school. The intern did. Franco flourished.
And so, we’ve been making this same kind of decision for the past decade. Over and over. Problem pops up - our team gets excited - we rush to the table where we sit in a circle and rumble with options - then choose the best option - then do the right thing.
It’s kind of our jam.
And this year, that helped us provide 13,558 (yes, read that number again, that’s a whole gob) of productive contacts to 1,486 students while training 44 mental health professionals.
In the past decade we’ve provided 74,914 meetings - to nearly 9,700 people! What we do works. And people feel better.
I think I’m supposed to say more words here because there’s some type of rule that blogs need to be long and blah blah and blather. But nope - we’re all busy with more important things to do - so go break your own rules to make the world better and I’ll stop typing these silly …
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