The standard came from somewhere.

The name on this program is my grandfather's middle name. Clarence Thornbrough Terry taught school, ran schools, and went to war. When the school at Unionville couldn't stay open because country kids couldn't get to the building, he took the back seat out of his old Ford, built two benches in its place, and drove thirteen students to school every morning himself. He didn't wait for the county to fix it. He fixed it. The adult in the room is responsible for building the system the student needs.

His daughter — my mother, Mary Lee Thompson — was a math teacher and a school counselor. Rheumatoid arthritis hit her at twenty-eight. She taught and counseled high school students for thirty more years anyway. When her body stopped letting her stand in front of a classroom, she taught from a desk. When she couldn't drive, she taught from our kitchen at home, one student at a time. Every time the disease made the room smaller, she found a harder room to walk into.

My grandfather taught me what discipline looks like. My mother taught me what toughness looks like when the body that is supposed to carry you starts working against you. The Thornbrough System is what happens when you put both of those into a curriculum.