Sports For Learning- Day One

      I saw something in the eyes of the parents as they brought their Kindergarten thru 6^th grade children to the first day of the Sports For Learning’s program in Davis, California. Hope. Parents, kids and educators have had a year of disruption. Schools change in many ways all of the time, but the innovation, patience and resilience required in the past 12 months has been immense.

   As 30 students and their parents approached me, my fellow Coach and the Principal the families gazed around the school grounds like they were seeing them for the first time. They looked like a large tour group approaching Disney World after a very long overnight drive. Hopeful, happy, but road-weary. The belief that the isolation of their 100% distance learning experience would soon end was something unsaid, but felt by all. 

 

  A couple of months ago, when I first saw the name of the organization, I thought, “wow, two of my favorite words right there in their title–Sports For Learning. 

    Sports, games, learning, thinking and fun are definitely a few of my favorite words and working as a Coach for SFL a couple of hours a day gives me a chance to do something I love. This opportunity is a chance for me to experience Ikigai by helping young people create their best selves and see the best in others. I ran across this Japanese word that roughly translates into your “reason to get out of bed” or “reason for being.” If you are doing something that you are good at, the world needs it, you love it and (bonus) you can be paid for it--maybe you have found a slice of Ikigai.

   The hope in the parents’ eyes was balanced by the hesitancy shown by the students. Being on school grounds for the first time in months with this new Coach in this unknown program had them hedging their bets. A few minutes in we were doing Boxing warmups and several students were requesting to do warmups from their favorite sports during future sessions. The kids saw the brightly colored cones lined up on the grass for some mysterious game and although I couldn’t see their smiles under those masks—the eyes don’t lie—they were having fun and feeling something like normalcy. So was I and it was a wonderful feeling.

 

     The hunger for community, for shared learning for…old-school…school is something almost everyone in education is feeling. We played three games (Positive Vibrations, Detective and Sir, Mayor, Sir) and the topics of believing in yourself, teamwork and listening were just so easy to discuss because the learning was hands-on, creative, outside and playful. In the Harvard Graduate School of Education blog, Grace Tatter writes that "there is a difference between free play and playful learning. While both are important, a pedagogy of play is grounded in playing toward certain learning goals, desiring activities that fit in and leverage curricular content and goals." 

     

     The Social & Emotional Learning goals of the (socially distanced/masks on) games and sport activities of Sports For Learning are something students need at all times, but after a year of isolation it felt like the perfect prescription for body, mind and soul for my cohort of motivated kids. Play, games and sport can provide a huge leverage for educators--especially for kids that realize how good we had it when teaching and learning in "normal" times back in early 2020.

    I don't know if day number two can live up to the magic of day one for my SFL experience, but my expectations are still high. I called several of the parents that I didn't speak to directly after our session and thanked them for allowing their students to be in the program and complimented them on their child's enthusiasm, kindness or respect for their peers and me. One parent blew me away when he told me his daughter said that it felt like the coach and students already knew each other for a long time, that class was fun and she couldn't wait for the next class. Ikigai is some good stuff.