Not long after I wrote about how things were about to go bad at my high school, a good thing happened yesterday. After classes, I didn't have anything in particular to do, so I decided to lace up my sneaks and shoot some hoops in the gym. To my surprise, when I walked in, I saw a group of my favorite ichinensei already playing a pickup game of basketball (most of them were girls). Out of all of my ichinensei that actually complete each worksheet and pay attention to me in each class, probably 80% of them were present on the basketball court yesterday. Amazing.
There were 9 of them, so they were eager for a 10th player and they called me over. We played 1 1/2 hours of good, fun ball. They oooohed and aaaaahed my amazing dribbling, passing and defensive skills while laughing at my terrible shooting. The best part was that during the breaks, many of them were actually begging for some English conversation. That's the kind of stuff I've been dreaming about.
Of course, the question is, Why don't they do this in the classroom? These same students are also among the most quiet in my classes, but you wouldn't have known it from their on-court trash talking. Ah well... I'll just wait for more opportunities like this.
There is a good explanation for that one. I read that gameday pre-game warmups and shoot-arounds weren't incorporated in the NBA at first until Alex Hannum did it with his team. Hannum's teams were always more energized and focused because of the gameday warmups and gave his team an edge. Now, if we can somehow insert shoot-arounds and warmups in all our classes, we'd be all set.
ReplyDeleteThat kinesthetic aspect of learning is sorely needed in my classroom. I'd love that, shooting around for ten minutes, coming back in for a grammar exercise, playing a little ultimate, and finishing up with some poetry. That'd be an awesome class, and the students would love it (well, the ball and ultimate, anyway).
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