South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

South St. Louis County News

St. Louis Call Newspapers

School district’s job to identify, ignite students’ sparks

Dr. Eric Knost
Dr. Eric Knost

I’ve spent my entire life striving to be at least as smart as my heroes.

Unfortunately, after all these years, I still fall short of equaling my father’s vast mechanical mind or my mother’s extraordinary knowledge of the heart. But in addition to a strong will to succeed, my parents and school teachers also recognized and nurtured those things which made life special and meaningful to me.

In reflection, I have no doubt these special and meaningful things were necessary ingredients for everything else to matter, especially learning and prospering. I’ve been a professional educator for 26 years and I believe, through all our efforts of comparing ourselves to each other and other countries, we’ve lost sight of something vastly important — the importance of bonding our young people to what makes life special and meaningful to them.

Our country has forged a path that assumes our kids are empty containers to be filled with prescribed knowledge. Much of this prescribed knowledge is absolutely necessary, but all is useless without a burning passion to do well, to be productive and to be happy. I can assure you, after encountering thousands upon thousands of kids over the years, those who fall in love with life are those sure to succeed.

What are these special and meaningful things? Research scientist Peter Benson calls them “sparks.” I interpret sparks as those things which connect individual kids to our world in a positive way. Our job is not to fill our youth with sparks. In fact, every child comes to this earth possessing important unique sparks which identify a needed place for them in society.

Sparks make children feel needed while providing purpose and passion. It is our job to identify and ignite sparks and to tap into what is meaningful and special to each individual child. This is where a passion for success and thriving begins.

Paramount to everything else, our desire should be for our children to lead happy and productive lives. No parent would sacrifice this as a trade-off for a higher-achieving country, and we’re foolish to believe this as a formula for success.

Those who fall in love with life are those sure to succeed.

If we identify and know kids by how they connect to the world in a positive way, their academic path will come with greater ease and all the rest is more likely to fall in place.

This is not at all to suggest academics are not important. In fact, I’ve always suggested quite the opposite.

Academics are very important, yet unachievable at the maximum level without the positive connections, or, the sparks. Why do kids travel down wrong paths? Maybe because their spark was never ignited. A life without passion yields misfortune, unhappiness, a lack of success and trouble of all kinds for our youth.

We are on a mission in the Mehlville School District to pair every child with champions who identify, ignite and nurture their sparks. Every child needs a champion and every child longs for a passion.

What’s your spark? What’s your child’s spark?

Ask them. Ask our youth and get used to this language. In the coming weeks, months and years you’ll hear it a lot as we continue to pave a pathway of excellence for our next generation.

I’m grateful for the Mehlville-Oakville community, and I’m confident we’ll continue to flourish as we further solidify and strengthen our bonds.

Thank you and remember, I can be reached at (314) 467-5001.

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