The past several posts have been targeting my first few
years in teaching, but haven't addressed the BT era of my life. BT meaning before teaching. Before teaching, mainly in high school or in
college, I loved playing sports. Anything from football, basketball, track, baseball, whiffle ball, kick
ball, indoor hockey during physical education classes or paper field goal
football. In paper field goal football you would fold a piece of paper into a triangle "football"
and "kick" it with your finger through your buddy's goal posts (made
using two hands, joining your thumbs at the end and holding up your pointer
finger). The goal was to “kick” the paper football through the "uprights"
and hit your buddy in the face. Extra points we always told ourselves,
especially if it we hit the other guy on the end of the nose! We would laugh
and then decide to move the goal posts to the side! Hey, I didn't say I was
smart, but I loved to play sports.
I think what attracted me to sports was the activity and
competitive nature of a game. I loved to win, to get the better of my opponent. Sometimes I carried it too far and became more of a jerk about stuff than I
should have been. I can still remember my displeasure and a teammate’s reaction
during an indoor hockey game when our goalie let someone score the winning
goal. I wasn't close enough to participate in the sequence of events, but I let
my displeasure be heard. I still remember the reaction of a teammate who was
within hear shot. She turned to me and said, "Not all of us can be
perfect, Mike!" Wow! That was a jerk moment. I do want to make a
clarifying point. Both teams were equally split male and female. I wasn't the
only guy playing with a bunch of girls and displeased with their efforts. So
does that may make me less of a jerk?
Were the teams I played on highly successful because of my
drive to win? Not really, in fact it was the exact opposite. The teams I played
on were rarely competitive. In fact, I never won a single football game during
my school years. Jr. High and high school career combined: zero wins, nada,
none, big goose egg, or whatever catch phrase you want to use. During high
school we held a record. A record, for a losing team? Yes, we had the record
for the state's longest losing streak: 48 games! It wasn't that we had bad
teams, it was just that everyone was always better at the end of the game. We
tried to have some fun with it through my middle high school years. We would
turn popular songs into our theme song. Remember the rock-n-roll group
Queen? We changed one of their popular
songs, "Another One Bites the Dust", into “Another Beats our Butt!”
We sang it well, but with little cheer behind it. Hmm, I wonder why?
In my last year of school I put a lot of effort into trying
unsuccessfully to help us end the losing streak. Although I received some individual
recognition for my efforts, it was still not the same as winning a game. I
wouldn't have been selfish about it. Just one win would have been fine. That
would been enough to break the streak. Eventually my high school did break the streak. The first
game after I graduated. Thanks fellas! Actually I was very happy for my friends
and proud of them. The school was so excited they left the scoreboard on all
night long. Even though I wasn't a member of that team I liked to believe that
I had something to do with helping them break the streak.
When I started college classes, my passion for sports
eventually led me into the area of teaching. I enrolled in the teaching program
so I could coach. Yes, that is correct. Before I wanted to teach, I wanted to
coach. That is by no means a slight on coaching. Coaches can have a positive
lifelong impact on students. With the right attitude, a coach can influence
student athletes positively. With the wrong attitude, he or she can have a
negative impact. My attitude, as you have already picked up, was not the most
positive. I was all about winning just as I had been in high school. I didn't
want to be known for losing. Which meant I was very high strung in my
practices. I expected a lot from my players. I tried to instill a great work
ethic and high expectations in my players, but I never seemed happy with them
unless they won. It was a philosophy that would never lead to fulfillment for
my players or me. It would change in my second year of coaching. I ran across
book by Rainer Martens called, "Successful Coaching." Great title, I
thought because I wanted to be a successful coach. Problem was I had the wrong
definition of what success looked like. Very quickly, on page five to be
precise, Mr. Martens changed my philosophy.
It was with one little illustration of two trophies that
made me change how I would coach. One of the trophies had a winning cup at the
top with a number two engraved on the bottom pedestal. The other trophy, taller
than other one, had a student on the top with a number one on it. Athletes
first and winning second was Martens’ philosophy. Son of a gun, I thought to myself. Have I been putting winning ahead of my players? Am I treating them like objects to achieve
the goal of winning. I took at honest look at myself as a coach.
The other problem with me was that I carried the people as
objects to help me win into the classroom. As a teacher I was treating my
students like they were little industrial workers in a factory. Lined up in
neat little rows, which allowed the custodians to clean the room rather neatly,
and working on their neat little worksheets. If they weren't winning – getting an A or weren’t in the 90th percentile
on a test – in class, I was disappointed in them and myself. It took me awhile to figure out how to stop getting the same
results. I finally realized that I had to stop doing the same thing. Instead of
focusing on how I taught, I focused more on how students learned. Teaching the
same way for everyone wasn't going to work. Teaching the students just to win
in my class wasn't going to work. I had to get to know them individually and
take different approaches with each person. It was time consuming, but well
worth the time invested. The irony was that it started with the thing that got
me into education. Wanting to be a
"Successful Coach" made me revaluate my teaching.
What about you? What is your approach to the classroom? If
you are coach, what is your attitude toward the athletes you lead. Are you an
athlete- first-winning-second type of coach? As a teacher are you a
student-first-teacher- second type of teacher? I would encourage you to take a
deep look at your approach to kids. As you are reflecting, remember your
students are always people first, then a member of your class and team. I wish
you the best in this process and hope that no one "Beats your Butt!"
when it comes to putting kids on the first place trophy.
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