It’s a complex job, being a teacher in Renton. Try to wrangle a roomful of 8-year-olds, at the same time teach them. That’s not to mention the inanity of some of the requirements foisted upon them by a bureaucracy pretty much unschooled in the way education works.

Last week, a question was posed to teachers in the Renton School District and the members of the business community who will share some quality time during the next month learning about their jobs.

Before I move on, I gotta say something about the Commons at Renton High School where the group gathered for the kick off of the Renton Chamber of Commerce Business and Education Exchange. The Commons is pretty spectacular – soaring walls built of the beautiful brick. The sheer majesty reminded me of the cathedrals in England – and Windsor Castle – built with the famed creamy yellow stone quarried from the small village of Taynton in the Cotswolds.

So back to that question: What was a highlight of your day? It was nice to hear that something positive had happened to almost everyone in that room. From exciting new business opportunities to some personal triumphs.

I liked hearing about what made the day special for the teachers. Students were passing their tests, even the ones that had worried their teacher. Many of the day’s victories seemed like small things, but each boosted the confidence of a young person and, I hope, made each teacher feel like they do, indeed, make a difference. Each deserved an applause from the crowd.

There was the primary class where the students finally distinguished a rhombus from something else (I can’t quite remember what.) I almost chuckled; rhombus sticks in my head because it was on a test my wife gave to her second graders. I had to wonder why someone at a tender age needed to understand something that was Greek to me as an adult. Well, maybe if someone had gently introduced me to rhombus at an early age, I might have had a better chance of succeeding at geometry later on.

By the way, a rhombus is something that’s diamond-shaped. I googled it. It’s on the next test.

Together, each of the small victories in Renton’s classrooms add up to something really big – an overall feeling of success, that almost everything is possible, that, yes, every child can learn. Think of it as a multitude of little fingers linked together with their teachers’, forming a chain, just like that unbreakable Taynton Stone. Now, that’s staying power.

Which brings me to my next point. Really, Bill Taylor’s point. He’s the president of the Chamber of Commerce. He’s admittedly a zealot when it comes to speaking up about what’s going on at Talbot Elementary School’s MicroSociety, where students apply their book learnin’ to the real world. Bill suggested that those of us on the business side listen closely to what’s happening in Renton’s classrooms, because that’s where our future competitors are sitting right now.

I’d like to change competitor to another word – replacement. Unless we adapt as businesses, unless we learn something new, we likely won’t be around to hire all these bright young people coming out of Renton’s schools. And, if we are, they’ll have new ways of literally doing business that might make us, well, obsolete.

For my part of the exchange, I am looking forward to meeting the staff and students at the Renton Academy, one of the Renton School District’s very special alternative schools. Maybe the conversation will turn to what I do. I could talk about putting words on paper, of course, but I could also talk about the power of online journalism. Note, I say journalism; they wouldn’t hear from me that bloggers are the professional journalists of the future.

Maybe the students won’t sit in a newsroom or post something to the Internet, but maybe I could give them something worthwhile: a gentle introduction to the power of communication.