I’ve never been in the locker room during halftime. You see, I was a cheerleader, not a varsity athelete.
So, it was a particular delight to attend The Ohio State University’s first Conference on Great Teaching last week. There we were, members of the OSU faculty (I teach creativity in the business school), meeting behind the scenes to learn how to be better educators. This conference took on the spirit of a coach’s exhortation when we were welcomed by Archie Griffin, the two-time Heisman Trophy winner. He described his “Inspirers,” the people who have inspired him during his life. He offered this quotation from the great Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.:
If a man is called to be a streetsweeper, he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music, or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, here lived a great streetsweeper who did his job well.
— Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.