Can we be as passionate about school as we are about sports?

Friday night I was so excited to be at Laurens as the SHS football team took on the LHS team in the 2^nd round of the high school league playoffs. The game was pretty close until the end of the 3^rd quarter when the Vikings got lucky on a muffed punt and then as they say the big “MO” turned our direction. As SHS pulled ahead by two touchdowns, tempers started rising. The other team was frustrated. They’d played hard. They’d worked hard all season…and all off season…. to prepare and they knew that their season was coming to an end. The refs and the coaches all handled the players with class and nothing serious occurred. As Rosebro#1 and I were walking back to our car, we passed the entrance to the gym where some of the LHS players were being greeted by parents and friends. It pulled at my heart strings as I watched some of these “grown men” cry. Rosebro#1 and I discussed this the entire way home from Laurens. He usually gets mad when his team loses. When he does poorly in a tournament, he has a temper tantrum so seeing this uncanny display of emotion from football players moved his as well. Saturday was Rivalry weekend for football.  I went to the grocery store at 7:45am Saturday morning when the only thing awake in my house was the dog. I decided to do a few others things while I was out and upon my return my three boys were camped out in front of the TV daring me to ask them to move and other than to refuel on food and drinks and despite a couple of bathroom breaks that is where they were the entire day.

While I love football, and I really do, I had no desire to watch football games sun up to sun down so I retreated to read a little in my bedroom which eventually lead into me napping. I was rather rudely aroused from my sleep from screaming coming from the game room. Mother instinct took over and I ran to the game room to find out who was hurt and how it happened. I discovered that the only thing hurt were the feelings of one of the Rosebros who was pulling for a team who lost in 2OT on what appeared to be a bad call by the ref. An hour or so later the coach blasted the refs in his post-game conference-which I understand to not really be acceptable coach behavior (but after seeing the re-play-I tended to agree with the coach). We went to a little party for the Palmetto Bowl Saturday night and I was fascinated by the reactions of the game.

I was thinking about all these reactions of the last four days and I thought how wonderful it would be if our schools were full of folks as passionate about school as they are about football. Our teams set goals-win the opener, win the region, win the championship. Do we help our students set goals? Do we have our own goals for the year? Our teams spend hours working together trying to get better each week. Do we look at our PLCs as a way to get better or do we complain that it is one more thing to do? We CHEER loudly when our team scores. Do we do that when our kids do something awesome? We high five when we go into overtime in a game. Did you high five your kids the last time we had no outdoor recess and celebrate that they have 15 extra minutes of learning that day? We chant our school’s cheer repeatedly at games. Does your class have a cheer or a chant or something that everyone understands to gear them up? We go to football games early and stay afterwards. Do you met students early or stay with them late ever to help them catch up, work on their projects or a goal? We read articles, blogs, fan pages on our team. Do you research your practice in the classroom? If you answered no to most of those questions, I would say you’re missing your passion for what you’re doing.  If you can have it in a game-whether it be football or any other sport, I would be safe to say you can have it in your teaching also.  Don’t you think our students deserve it?