School starts for real in just over two weeks. The Delta Variant is still making its presence in our lives widely known. Too much of society seems intent on using school as a catalyst for inventing new varieties of division to make everyone feel as angry and uncomfortable as possible. This isn’t really the environment anyone wants to see in the schools as we start another academic year. In the words of one particularly wise songwriter, “We all need some light.”
One of the most currently recognized sources of light, optimism, and comfort is the TV show “Ted Lasso.” Yes, it’s on Apple TV+ which not many people seem to have. It’s a little tragic that more people aren’t able to enjoy this show, because it takes a fairly typical fish out of water premise and turns it into something remarkable. Since the character of Ted Lasso is a coach, and with a little imagination it’s easy to see the connections between being a coach and being a teacher, I’ve collected some moments from the show that I think would be good things for teachers to keep in mind as they begin this potentially hairy, but still possibly great, school year.
For the uninitiated: “Ted Lasso” is a show about a college football coach who was hired to coach a professional football/soccer team in England without any knowledge of the game. I won’t go into much more detail about it since I’ll be spoiling a few things along the way as it is. I’ve listed ten points because ten has always been a good round number to fall back on for lists since the days of David Letterman. As always, in no particular order….
(1) “Biscuits with the Boss.” Ted brings team owner Rebecca shortbread biscuits (cookies) every morning as an icebreaker. As he says, “We can’t be good partners unless we get to know each other.”
Everything about success in education begins with relationships. This goes for both teachers and students. Students won’t learn as much from someone they don’t know or respect, so it’s important to win them over by demonstrating they’re important to you. Find a way to connect so you can be good partners.
(2) “Be a goldfish.”
Sam, one of the players, is down on himself for making a mistake at practice. Ted points out that a goldfish is the happiest animal in the world because it has a ten second memory. He tells Sam to be a goldfish.
Don’t dwell on the failures and mistakes. They will always be a part of what you do, and overthinking your way through them won’t change what happened, whether it was a kid who did something foolish or a test that went poorly, or a time you lost your temper. Take what you need from the situation to move forward and find a way to try again.
(3) “One of eleven.” After one of Ted’s first games, he calls his best scorer, Jamie, into the office to talk. Jamie’s expecting to be dressed down by a new coach he doesn’t respect. Instead, Ted calls him the most talented athlete he’s ever coached. Jamie’s caught slightly off guard. Ted then tells him the one thing he can do better is to remember not to think of himself as one in a million, but one of eleven, and how much of a difference it would make if he played as part of the team instead of trying to be the star.
Teachers work on several different kinds of teams. Looking ahead this year, I’ve got a grade level team, my class, language arts teachers, math teachers, building leadership, special education, English language learners, specialists, and that’s off the top of my head. Each team works toward the same goal of achievement. If minimal professional respect for the people you work with is the best you can do, fine. Not everyone will become best friends. If you’re able to become friends, even better. If you’re bossy or arrogant or aloof or refuse to listen to anyone, you won’t get as far as you otherwise could. Communication and collaboration are important parts of making any team work effectively. If the team is working, as Ted points out to Jamie, “the sky’s the limit.”
(4) “Wins and Losses.” Ted says while being interviewed by a somewhat contentious reporter that he doesn’t care about wins and losses. He later clarifies that it’s more important to him “to help these young fellas be the best versions of themselves.”
Wins and losses do matter, often more than they should. Pro sports? Yeah. Student test scores being used to measure some aspect of progress for the student, the teacher, the grade level team, or the building? Hell yes. Student progress has to be monitored so learning needs can be addressed and serviced effectively, but at the end of the year I’m usually happier to reflect on the personal growth my students made than worrying about how many percentage points above or below a dictated proficiency level they were. Outside of the overdone data jockeys that are too commonly found in 21st Century education, I’d speculate most teachers would feel the same way.
(5) “Na na na na na na na na Dani Rojas.” Dani Rojas, a player injured for the first part of the season, makes his first appearance. He’s so consistently joyful that Ted compares him to a golden retriever. He even turns his own name into a song, and somehow there’s nothing arrogant about it. He’s respectful to the coaches, friendly with his teammates, and it turns out he’s incredibly talented.
Dani is that student who loves to learn. The one who always raises their hand, gets everything right and still works hard. The one wants to know what else they can do after they finish the test they just completed with a perfect score. Every teacher loves having a Dani Rojas in class, but if you have a class made up of other challenges, it can be too easy to set Dani aside and figure since they’re going to take care of themselves, you can devote energy to the kids who need more of your attention. That’s not really true, though. As a teacher, you can either waste that drive or find a way to encourage it. What could Ted do to make Dani the best version of himself when there’s already so much about him that’s good? What can you do as a teacher to bring more learning out of that student, at a level with appropriate challenge?
(6) “We can’t change the past. We can choose to honor it.” The training room is cursed, as everyone on the team knows. It's said to be haunted by the ghosts of four hundred WWI soldiers who took their military physicals in that room. Ted’s solution for breaking the curse is for each player on the team to sacrifice something personally important as a tribute. The team collectively and verbally rolls their eyes at this until Roy Kent, captain of the team, stands up and yells, “We’re all gonna ________ do it!” (Roy swears so much in this show he owes his eight-year-old niece about one thousand pounds each month in her swear notebook.)
Every class has an effective leader somewhere in the group, someone who has the respect of the others. If you get 25-30 kids spending ten months together, chances that leader will emerge. I had a Roy Kent in my class last year. He didn’t swear like the character Roy Kent, but he was absolutely a leader, and acknowledged by the others as such. He didn’t aspire to lead; it’s just who he naturally was. Luckily my Roy Kent was an incredibly positive influence on the rest of the class -- I suppose he was more like half Roy Kent and half Dani Rojas. Unfortunately, some leaders can also bring negativity to the group and drag the class down. It’s important to try and recognize who these kids are and to win them over for the good of the class.
(7) “Football is life.” The mantra of Dani Rojas; he says it at least five times an episode. Any of us would be lucky to find something in life we love as much as Dani loves playing.
Teaching? Oh, wow. It is far too easy for teaching to become life. Too easy to get pulled into the wins and losses and dramas that define a school year. Too easy to lose sleep over at-risk students. Too easy to bring three stacks of papers home and tell yourself you're doing it just so you can keep up. Too easy to get lost in so many different rabbit holes that you don’t completely emerge from until a week after the last day of the school year. Teaching can’t be life, and this is coming from someone who has let that happen to him far, far too many times. You have to find a balance between what you are and what you do.
(8) “Be curious, not judgmental.” Rebecca’s ex shows up at the local pub with a date, mostly to push her buttons like the a-hole he clearly is. He and Ted decide to play a game of darts with reasonably high stakes. They think they’re each hustling the other guy. Before winning, Ted gives a little speech based around the aforementioned Walt Whitman quote, explaining why it’s more beneficial to be curious instead of judgmental.
What assumptions do you make about your students based on first impressions? As time goes on, are you looking for ways to reinforce those assumptions, or do you let your opinion evolve as you learn more about who they truly are? What about the people you work with? Our school is in the unique position of having experienced nearly unprecedented staff turnover in the past three years. That’s a lot of new colleagues trying to figure each other out at once. I’ll be the first to say there are still a number of people I don’t know well enough to have a normal conversation with that would go beyond simple “How was your summer?” small talk. This should be more of a long-term project instead of something done during a twenty-minute team building, ice breaking activity in the middle of a staff meeting.
(9) “It’s the hope that kills you.” The last game of the season is an important one for the team. The players, and the fans, all subscribe to this philosophy, feeling that getting your hopes up only to have them dashed away on the rocks is a bad thing. Ted, unsurprisingly, disagrees. He thinks it’s the lack of hope.
How do you approach teaching a new skill? Or reviewing one before an assessment? Are there students you habitually write off because you don’t expect them to accomplish anything? Sadly, most of us probably have. We hope they’ll do well, but things don’t always work out that way. It’s important to remember that blind hope is nothing but a joke people play on themselves. However, hope with action behind it always stands a chance.
(10) “Tear it Up.” Jamie returns to the pitch in Season 2 after events have led to him having a contentious relationship with nearly the entire Richmond team. In the scene when he returns, “Tear it Up,” a particularly rocking song found as the second track of Side 1 on Queen’s 1984 album “The Works” is used as the soundtrack to his return. It’s a perfect fit for the tension and drama that we see taking place. It’s also one of the songs that much younger Tom actually listened to while getting pumped up before soccer games in high school.
This, in my view, is easily a good enough reason to include that moment on this list. Maybe it’d be a good idea to have a go-to song or two in your back pocket to start the school day, even if you listen to it during your commute. Trust me, it can make all the difference.
Now go out there and get them, team! Just be sure you have your mask. And you've been vaccinated. Because you know Ted would be vaccinated, and would probably say, "Vaccines will keep me and my team safe? Well, I'd say to that the same thing I'd say to the bartender in my favorite barbecue spot in Kansas City -- I'll take a double shot of that, please and thank you!"
No comments:
Post a Comment