It's a milestone, perhaps to be posting #300 in my little Monday-Friday blogging experiment that has been going for about 15 months. Sometimes I worry that I don't have a clear enough focus or that I am either being too general or too personal. I honestly have no idea who even reads the posts.
But I carry on, and one of the ongoing themes of the blog is that I imagine writing for media advisers or prospective teachers, and that is where we are now as I continue exploring the essay "17 Reasons Football Is Better than High School." I consider sports reporting to be a great opportunity for narratives and for writing nonfiction stories that include all the rhetorical devices we learn in English Language Arts courses.
Today it's #3: In football, teenagers are honored.
This may seem both obvious and (depending on your interest in athletics) unneeded. Athletes are constantly given various forms of approval, from award banquets, pep assemblies, yearbook spreads, trophies, to letter jackets and banners hanging in the gym. We put team on Homecoming floats and community members attend games (or at least they CAN).
Imagine those sorts of recognition events and signifiers for top math students. Stars always get attention, and some of that is likely misplaced, but even the third string offensive linemen get their letters and feel part of the larger football program.
When I taught in Iowa City, the cross country program in the school was tops in the state year after year, and at one point there were about 100 girls on the team. Imagine that! Only the top six times count in cross country meets, but the sport was about so much more.
For over 90 young women, it was about reducing personal times and about being part of a larger movement. It was about hanging with friends at team 'feeds' or simply getting to know some students when girls were freshmen and trying to find their way through 9th grade. It was about eventually working hard enough to perhaps be one of the runners with the best times, even if now they were struggling to even finish the course. There was even a recognition that running and pushing oneself was good for you, mentally and physically.
In many academic courses, a constant question is "Will this be on the test?" Teachers grimace and come up with sarcastic zingers in response, but that question never gets asked among sports teams. In sports, everything is on the test, and the tests are games.
Few students feel a spirit of camaraderie with their chemistry class peers. "Hey, guys, we are all working for a goal here and we can support one another and everyone can find something supportive to do to make our chemistry class great." Ha!
A standard drama cliché is that "there are no small parts, only small actors." The point is that the show is more than the sum of its parts and that no one on stage can be successful without a larger, dedicated community.
In high school academics, we have a star system and some of those "stars" rarely even interact with other students, much less find ways to lift the performance of the entire class or grade. That is due to the competition in most classes being between students as individuals (if she gets a good mark, that reduces my chance to get a good mark) rather than the focus being on the group succeeding.
Students hate group projects in English or social studies classes, learning that some in each group always take on more than others. Labor in those groups is never precisely equal. Why should I share my hard work with others who aren't as interested or motivated or smart as I am?
Again, that is not a regular concern among athletes. They are part of something larger than themselves.
The honors come naturally.
No comments:
Post a Comment