The parents and students who packed the school committee meeting room on Bennett Street Thursday weren’t protesting a policy change or voicing complaints.
Instead, they were embracing an annual celebratory evening better known as the George F. Laubner Academic and Leadership Awards.
Attendance at the event sent school officials scrambling to find and set up extra chairs. Once underway, parents, teachers and principals beamed as elementary and middle school students accepted certificates and applause.
The Lynn Business/Education Foundation sponsored the awards. Foundation President Gale Thomas and executive director Frederick Cole were on hand along with award presenter John Laubner. Cole explained how the charity acts as a bridge linking businesses interested in local schools with public school financial needs.
While dedicated to helping Lynn schools, the foundation is also focused on parents and the crucial role they play in education. Thomas urged Laubner Award recipients to “turn and thank your parents.” Her remarks drew applause and smiles because teachers, principals and education advocates like Laubner, Cole and Thomas know mom and dad are the platform of a youngster’s education.
Schools provide the carpenters, masons and other specialists in the form of teachers, principals, coaches, aides, custodians and cafeteria workers who build an education. But without parents or other significant adults in their lives, children flounder before they can become successful students.
Children absorb knowledge in school and the classroom is where they are inspired to excel and dig deeper into specific subjects. But the motivation and drive they need to succeed is delivered at home. Parents who filled the committee room last week worked hard to set down, brick by brick, the lessons in discipline, thoroughness and perseverance required to make full use of an education.
Most of them arrived for the evening’s ceremonies looking like they came straight from work or from a day spent tending to their child’s younger siblings. They smiled with pride watching their son or daughter receive a certificate. Still, the smiles were tempered with the certain, somewhat weary knowledge that success in school starts at home. That’s where the award is a smile or a pat on the back or those four words that encapsulate the definition of success: “You can do it.”
