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Butterflies and Helicopters

July 9, 2014

I’m doing as much as I know how to attract butterflies to my garden. For example, I’ve planted a butterfly bush and milkweed plants. I do this because these plants are supposed to attract butterflies and bees, and I know butterflies and bees are essential to producing vegetables.
One of the greatest miracles any person can observe is to watch a butterfly emerge from a cocoon. It was as wondrous to me last summer as the first time I saw it occur when I was a young child, when I first saw a butterfly emerge with damp, shriveled wings. 
I was told then that we shouldn’t interfere, that we shouldn’t help the butterfly escape the cocoon and shouldn’t help spread the wings. We had to let the butterfly struggle. We were instructed that the struggle would give strength to the wings, and that would be essential to the butterfly’s survival.
Childhood is much like this, but too often helicopter parents intervene and interfere with the growth process and, ultimately, weaken their children’s ability to fend for themselves, to overcome adversity and to take flight.
Helicopter parents endanger our butterfly children.

Representative Voices

April 4, 2017

The Michigan High School Athletic Association is governed by a Representative Council of 18 members and a designee of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. It is important that this representative body actually be representative of the group it serves.

Of the 18 regular members of the Representative Council,

  • 16 have served as high school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 16.5 years. Eight have also served as junior high/middle school athletic directors, with an average tenure of 11.7 years.

  • 11 have served as high school assistant principals, averaging 6.2 years.

  • 5 have served as high school principals, averaging 6.4 years.

  • 3 have served as junior high/middle school principals, averaging 11.7 years.

  • 3 have served as superintendents or assistant superintendents, averaging 4.7 years.

  • 17 of the 18 have served as high school coaches, with an average tenure of 6.9 years. Seven have also served as middle school coaches, with an average tenure of 7.6 years.

  • 11 have been MHSAA registered officials. The average tenure has been 13.1 years, in an average of 2.1 sports.

To assure representation of both large and small schools in all parts of the state, the MHSAA Constitution requires that four Council members be elected from the Class A and B schools in four different geographic regions, and four be elected from Class C and D schools from those four geographic sections.

Five other Council members are elected by statewide votes, with two of those specifically designated persons serving junior high/middle schools, and one representing private and parochial schools. The public schools within the city of Detroit also have a representative.

To assure representation from females and minorities that might not occur through the election process, the MHSAA Constitution requires that the Council examine its makeup after each election and appoint up to a maximum of four persons at any one time to help address those deficiencies. The Council sometimes uses this appointment process to bring better representation to a part of the state that is underrepresented through the election process.

It goes almost without saying that nearly all of the Council members participated in competitive school sports and are the parents of participants in interscholastic athletics.

All in all, it’s a team with breadth and depth that touches most of the constituent bases of high school sports in Michigan.