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The pin has two levels of significance:

• The little red wagon is a symbol reminding adults of our childhood and the civic responsibility that we all share to find the best way in which we can each contribute to the well-being and education of today’s children. It’s the job of educators, the pin reminds us, to get all those grownups to pile into the wagon and then for each of us to reach back, grab the handle and pull everyone along in aligned support of children’s learning and well-being. This is what I talk about when I refer to ‘educators as leaders’.

• The “tboc©” on the wagon stands for The Benefit Of Children©: the criterion we each should use to guide us in daily decision-making … for the big decisions as well as the small ones.

These metal lapel pins are meaningful, colorful and indestructible. Brilliant teaching tools and beautiful gifts.

They make great giveaways and discussion-starters for nearly everyone who has ever been a child!

In order not to shout past each other, sometimes all we need is a simple rule that we can all share in common … a principle we can all agree upon, so we can find the common ground on which we can collaborate.

When considering any issue worthy of debate, we can be certain we’re making the best decision from among its alternatives if we make it about The Benefit Of Children©.

It isn’t all that complicated. We’ve all seen how simple organizing principles – like “It’s the economy, stupid!” or “Show me the money!” – make it easier to bring people together into agreement on what’s important and what our priorities should be.

tboc© calls on us to make only one leap of faith: we have to agree that decisions that favor the wellbeing of children are better than those that don’t (or that don’t favor children’s wellbeing as much). That’s it!

Once we accept tboc© as our organizing principle, we’ve established a simple criterion for making our public decisions: Is the decision we’re about to make better or worse for children than its next best option?