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Newcomer Wisdom

November 20, 2012

A group I work with in my spare time, the Refugee Development Center, sponsored a team in a local youth soccer league.  Appropriately, the team’s nickname is “Newcomers.”

It took the team most of the season to score a goal; and it was in its final game of the season that the team earned its first victory.

After one game, I was enlisted to transport three players to their residences.  All three were Napali.  I used this time to ask their opinions about the education they were receiving in the local public school.

They had no objection to the content of the courses, but criticized the conduct of their classmates.  They cited a lack of respect for teachers, and a lack of discipline.  They had experienced the discipline of the stick in their homeland, and believed it would be helpful to classrooms in the US.

These young newcomers also noted that their instructional day in Nepal was almost two hours longer, plus they were in school a half-day on Saturdays.

From this conversation I was once again impressed that much of what has been done in attempts to improve public education has overlooked the obvious:  stronger discipline and longer days.  Most of what we do in US public education is the envy of the world.  What people from other countries wonder about is the lack of discipline and time on task. 

Empowering and supporting teachers’ discipline and increasing the length of the school day and year are not sexy solutions to what ails public education.  They are just simpler answers mostly overlooked.

A Dedicated Downtime

November 7, 2014

Those who administer, coach or play school sports have become familiar with the phrase “downtime” to describe that period just before a season when coaches are not allowed to assemble players for activities that look too much like practice being conducted before the earliest practice of the season is allowed by rule.

In school sports, therefore, we often consider the downtime as a time to do less as teams – less than during the season, and even less than what is allowed teams during most of the offseason. If student-athletes are going to prepare for the upcoming season, they do so more as individuals than as organized teams during the brief preseason downtime.

In this we might look to the arts and literature for assistance; for it is in the downtime – the time away, on one’s own – that many artists, writers and other creative types have found their inspiration for excellence.

In Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, author Mason Currey describes the working habits of 160 creative thinkers. A common theme is the time these people demanded to be away from others to walk, sit and ponder. To wonder. To work through obstacles that seemed to be blocking their progress.

This is an imperfect analogy for student-athletes and school coaches, but it’s still instructive. In fact, a disconnected downtime – one without television, texting, tweeting and team drills, but with time and space to earnestly assess strengths and address weaknesses – might be central to an effective prescription for the upcoming season.