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April 17, 2017

It appears that everyone is talking about where the championship rounds of the Michigan High School Athletic Association basketball tournaments should be played.

This has become a topic because our traditional site, Michigan State University’s Breslin Student Events Center, is not available to host the Semifinals and Finals of the girls tournament in 2018 and 2020 or the boys tournament in 2019, in both cases because the facility must remain open for MSU’s women’s basketball team should it earn the privilege of hosting first and second round games of the NCAA Division I Women’s Basketball Tournament.

It is important that the people listening know that most of the people talking have little knowledge of what facilities are actually available in 2018 and beyond.

For example, The Palace of Auburn Hills, Little Caesars Arena in Detroit and Van Andel Arena are not available in 2018, nor is a sentimental favorite for the girls tournament, Central Michigan University.

By mid-May, the MHSAA will have announced decisions for 2018, and likely for that one year only. Between now and the end of 2017, the MHSAA will be evaluating site options for both tournaments, boys and girls, as well as potential scheduling changes for both the regular season and MHSAA tournaments that could alter what facilities are needed and when. This could increase opportunities to use NCAA Division I institutions, and/or this could reduce or eliminate the need for those facilities.

It would be unfortunate if we turn ourselves inside-out and upside-down to avoid NCAA conflicts. Some of the scheduling scenarios being studied would seriously stress District and Regional tournament sites and management as well as overwork the ranks of our tournament-ready basketball officials. Other scheduling scenarios would adversely affect other winter sports or increase overlap with fall sports or spring sports. We need to move carefully, and with broad consensus.

There is a desire to host the championships of the girls and boys tournaments at the same venue, but there is no legal obligation to do so. There is a desire to build on traditions established at Michigan State University, but conflicts and costs make that unlikely to continue. There is a desire to please everyone, but that won’t happen.

Integrated Learning

July 1, 2016

One of the positive aspects of life that school sports and other after-school activities do better than most everything else is to build a sense of community. Another is to teach teamwork. And both are mostly missing in the world of individualized, online learning.

It sounds good to advocate for personalized, learn-at-your-own-pace “curriculum” (one can hardly call it “instruction”), but that model misses so much of what education is supposed to help a civilized society accomplish.

Benjamin Riley, founder and executive director of Deans for Impact (deansforimpact.org), makes this point in his May 18, 2016, Opinion on EdSurge (edsurge.com), “Bursting the ‘Personalization’ Bubble: An Alternative Vision for Our Public Schools.” Mr. Riley advances four principles:

  1. Teachers – not technology – should be the primary designers of students’ learning experiences.

  2. The experiences that teachers design should emphasize the social aspect of learning.

  3. The experiences that teachers design should be informed by learning science.

  4. Teachers should primarily use technology to identify social learning opportunities.

Mr. Riley concedes that these four principles are just a sketch – an outline for a different conversation than that which currently dominates education reform. “But there is one point on which I’m unyielding,” Riley writes: “We begin to forge the character of our country in our public schools. At a time when I feel our nation pulling further apart, I hope we start thinking and talking more about how we might move closer together, and promote the integration – rather than the personalization – of our learning experiences in public education.”

It is not Mr. Riley’s point, but it is mine, that school sports – including the requirement that participants be full-time students in the schools they represent on interscholastic sports teams – promotes the integration of the learning experience which is critical to shaping the character of our country.

The integration we speak of is developing the whole child through direct interaction daily with a diverse student body and a wide variety of curricular and extracurricular activities. This builds students, schools and society.