Student-Centered Sports
November 1, 2013
We boldly, unapologetically and repeatedly state that interscholastic athletics are different than sports programs on any other level by any other sponsor – different because these programs are school-sponsored and, to an extent like no other, student-centered. But what does that really mean?
The easier to describe – school-sponsored – means that interscholastic athletics are conducted by schools themselves. They are administered under the auspices of boards of education, with responsibilities delegated to administrators, and then to coaches, who are closely supervised by those administrators under the broad policies and procedures approved by their local boards of education.
The more difficult to describe – student-centered – means that our orientation starts with students. We think first about how many we can include, not how many we exclude. We adopt rules not to be elite but to enhance the experience for students, knowing that the higher the standards we establish for eligibility and conduct, the greater the benefit to the students, their schools and the surrounding community.
In a student-centered program, thought is given not only to the students who want exceptions to rules, but also to the other students who would be displaced if those exceptions were made.
In a student-centered program, we consider the whole child and all the children.
Panama Points
January 25, 2012
Author David Kord Murray opines in Borrowing Brilliance that almost all good ideas are borrowed, and the farther afield one roams from the topic at hand the more useful the idea may be (and the more brilliant it may appear to be).
So it didn’t surprise me to discover useful ideas for modern day leadership and management in a book written in the 1970s about a period many years before that – David McCullough’s history of the building of the Panama Canal titled The Path Between the Seas.
I learned first that the primary task of this huge project was not what it appears to be. It was not primarily an engineering feat, but medical. Not removing dirt, but disease. Not conquering the largest obstacles, but the smallest insects. It was only after the diseases were understood and controlled that the construction could advance and the project could be completed.
Second, I learned that once the construction was begun, there was a bigger challenge than digging the pathway clear. It was removing the unwanted dirt and debris to other places. It wasn’t the front end of the project alone that mattered, but the back end as well: where to put the hundreds of millions of tons of rock and dirt on or around this narrow isthmus of land.
For every project there is need to assess what the underlying issues are that might get in the way of accomplishing the more apparent tasks before us.
And for every project there is need to fully assess consequences. We don’t want merely to move the dirt around, creating new problems as we do so.
I will be considering these thoughts as I soon see with my own eyes the Panama Canal, constructed over four decades and completed almost 100 years ago. And gratefully, I will be fully immunized for diseases largely conquered during the completion of this engineering marvel.