The World Series of Classrooms

""The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." ~ Babe Ruth 

Each year, it seems as though I have more students involved with sports, whether it is soccer, basketball, baseball, gymnastics, or tennis. Some of these students spend hours after school with practice. When my daughter was a varsity cheerleader, she would have practice after school from 3-6, but during competition season (which I swear never ended!) she would have it 3-5 and then again 7-10...during the week! 

When Morrell coached a girls’ basketball team, he was a grad student as well as a tutor at an Athletic Study Center. Although he had not incorporated sports in his classroom to promote literacy, he decided to try it with the students he tutored and the girls on the BB team. 

Caleb was a student who Morrell tutored, who was considered not too bright by his teachers. He was an avid fan of football, as well as being a player himself. What Morrell noticed was that although Caleb’s teachers, and Caleb himself, claimed that he was a weak reader, when he would meet with Morrell, he would have the sports page clearly annotated with notes about players, teams, and stats. He possessed a vast knowledge of many NCAA Division I football teams, to which he could add his critical commentary. He was critically reading and analyzing the stats, just not in the way his teachers wanted. Morrell’s goal was to transfer these skills to the broader context of school.

With his basketball team, Morrell created mandatory study sessions for the girls and he stocked the playroom with various magazines, books, and biographies related to sports. He would also record as many basketball games as he could so that the players could check the tapes out to analyze. If they checked out a tape, they were required to show Morrell the notes that they took pertaining to the plays, as well as the players. Morrell used this time with his players to also help them deconstruct the limited gender roles for women that are supported by the mass media and public institutions, like schools. 

As a teacher, I know that sports are important but it is irksome when students receive Cs, Ds, and even Fs, because they seem to have no time for school work. Morrell takes another perspective on this that uses the students’ interest in sports to help them develop stronger literacy skills. My problem is that classroom teachers have less ability to do this than the students’ coaches, and until coaches incorporate these strategies into their practice schedules, I don’t think that students will receive the most they can from sports. Morrell suggests that for teachers who are not coaches, we need to establish powerful relationships with coaches at the school. We should see them as allies and offer suggestions as to how they can incorporate literacy skills into their practices. By adding the topic of sports to the classroom, English teachers can also have critical dialogue about the relationships between sports and society. His argument is “The development of critical literacy entails not only a reading of the world but a rewriting of that world.” (114)