Sports saved me back when I was in school. Literally, they saved me. Many of my teachers were insensitive idiots, the textbooks bored the crap out of me and rote learning was the way of the world.
Sports gave me a reason to like school. (I always LOVED learning, but I didn’t always love school. And sadly, the two are not always synonymous.)

Now, do sports trump academics? Of course not. But I don’t think it’s an either/or scenario whereas one side needs to “win out” over the other. When I really think about it I realize sports have taught me things about dedication, teamwork, heart, tenacity, personal effort, dignity and so on that school – at least my school – hardly ever even attempted. But a coach, they live, eat and breathe these things. (At least, a good one, does.)

Sports can often mold young people in a way that we absolutely want and even though some schools seem to go psycho in their support of their football or basketball teams (baseball, volleyball and so on, not so much – those are the big 2) academics, when I really think about it is being prioritized by our schools to some extent. After all, it’s always supposed to be class first, then sports. And the city leagues do a pretty good job of insisting upon academic eligibility before they will let players compete.

(No, the system is not perfect. I know, I know.)

The thing is, for some of these players, sports are the only reason they will even bother to go to class. Now we can argue of the merits of that mentality, but it’s a different topic. (A failing of society, parents, the home life, the community, and so on.) But tossing athletics under the bus in the name of turning our schools into core curriculum warehouses seems like a really bad idea to me.

Our kids need exercise (America is plagued by overweight children) and our kids love sports. Plus, lately I’ve been on the “tech geek” bandwagon and I really feel as if some fresh air and outdoor activity is fundamental to a well-functioning human body. Sports is a great compliment to school and without sports, I do feel schools are lesser.

But I feel that way about the arts, music, industrial arts and so on as well.

Like I said, sports practically saved me back in the day. Supporting them does not have to come at the expense of class. One should, in an ideal world, walk hand-in-hand with the other.

Is it okay to feel good? Is it okay to be FIRED UP? Do we spend enough time genuinely recognizing the joy that is the teaching profession?

I mean I just got done with an IMMENSE amount of work. Papers, lesson plans, a trip to Jacksonville, Florida where I did a student assembly for a few hundred at-risk middle school kids about the value of school, education and making good choices (a total HOME-RUN, btw… I mean kids are kids are kids and anyone who doesn’t think so, doesn’t really know teens very well at all. They may put up masks, but inside they love to laugh, be inspired and feel validated!).

So does the crappy hotel bed, the 3 hour layover in Atlanta, the fact that every seat on the plane was taken on my way home and I had a dude the size of an NBA basketball player sit in the middle seat next to me for the flight across country bother me?

Well, it does if I let it — but if I focus on how great it feels to have just done a heck of a lot of hard, good professional work as the end of the month approaches, well… there’s value in that. Deep value.

Loving your job is spectacularly important and if you don’t remember to acknowledge and honor the love, and relish in the hard, strenuous, push you to the edge work, now and then, you are gonna burn out.

But if you do, you get forged into steel. Just like metal, the heat of our job can burn the impurities away. Remember what it’s all about. That’s the fountain of our strength!

No one asked me but…

Considering that a bunch of high-fallutin’, really smart, really accomplished folks are now getting together to concotuate national standards (and you wonder why they didn’t invite me to the party?) I figured I throw in my own 2 cents.

All I ask is that they give me one standard. Just one. The rest, I’ll leave to the professionals.

Standard 1.0: Have fun!

That’s right, have fun. Enjoy your class, enjoy your students, enjoy your work and enjoy your challenges. Smile. Laugh. Tell jokes. Throw open our classroom doors to humor.

After all, these are kids. Diverse, unique, spectacularly special kids who are universally bound by very few universally applicable elements whereby a national model of standards is really going to aptly apply to meet the needs of every kid in this country anyway.

But all kids need to laugh. And all kids love to laugh. And, as someone much smarter than yours truly once said, there is no shorter line between the chasm of two people than a shared smile.

Having fun in the classroom is not a luxury… it is a critical need. People learn better when they enjoy what they are learning. Teachers are more effective when they enjoy what they are teaching. School administrators grumble less when they see kids enjoying school and the teachers enjoying that the kids are enjoying school. Great parents appreciate the value of fun. Great teachers appreciate the value of fun. Kids most assuredly appreciate the value of fun and we will never reach our fullest potential as penultimate technicians of the academic craft (whatever the heck that means — I just stuck it in there because it sounded all erudite) unless we are having fun.

Fun and rigor are not mutually exclusive in the classroom and anybody who thinks so… well, they are a stick in the mud who doesn’t really know much about how best to reach kids.

I’ll say it again… Standard 1.0: Have fun!

It would be a great contribution to American education if we could all recognize its value. And it applies top to bottom across the board in the world of K-12.