I have read with interest my colleagues’ recent posts exploring the comparisons between football and academics. Bec and I are currently working with year 7 and 8 on an integrated project and it has become increasingly evident how the fundamentals of football can help to develop the academic success of students and vice versa.
Within our lessons students are learning and developing skills which will equip them for life. I observe students throughout the sessions, enabling me to pick up on areas where they are struggling. I then attempt to address these areas to allow the students to gain a better understanding of what is being asked of them and thus allow them to apply themselves more effectively.
Last week I observed many interactions in the OLS that related to the students working within teams to produce their work. Teamwork is an integral part of PBL and a skill which is vital to the working environment, as is the ability to resolve conflicts should they arise.
Teamwork is always an area of debate and in this particular project Bec and I have chosen the teams that students will work in.
As with many situations, some teams work well together and are productive and sometimes teams struggle to work effectively. Often conflicts present themselves, creating arguments and unrest within teams. As a teacher I feel that it is important for students to experience this. It happens within the workplace, where you have to work with people you would not usually choose to work with, or people you do not get along with.
It is equally important, at this level, to equip students with the language, skills and understanding that will allow them to have confidence in resolving the conflicts. It is easy to say “I want to change teams” or “I can’t work with this person so I am just going to do my own thing”. Such responses do not resolve the underlying issues.
So, I have spent a lot of time with a few of the groups that have struggled to maintain a healthy working team. Here is the analogy I use to help students understand the importance of perseverance and team work. Here is the link I draw with football and teamwork for academic success.
I ask the students which position they play on the football field, what the purpose of the game is, what role they play, what they would do if a teammate was not playing their role properly. I also ask them what they would say to their team mates when this happened.
We discover their place on the pitch and their role of getting the ball out of their defence and passing it up through the field of players towards the attacking goal. We discover that all players on the team are striving for one thing and that is to score a goal, but not just any goal, they want to score a goal that is spectacular, one which they and their friends will talk about for weeks to come. We discover they have a job that is relevant to the position they hold in the team and that essentially if one member was having an ‘off’ day, or was not good at playing in that position, then play can break down. Students would encourage their teammates and sometimes they work harder to cover positions. We also discuss how if one player walked off because they were unhappy, or couldn’t work with people or someone did something they didn’t like, it would leave a huge gap in the field disrupting play, resulting in their team not being able to distribute the ball effectively.
I then put this back into the context of the OLS. In a team in the classroom the positions are the same – everyone has strengths and weaknesses and generally in a team you play to them in terms of the position you play. The position in a class team depends on what role you have been assigned, to draw or to collect research or to report back to your team. The goal in the classroom is to complete the work and final products within the deadlines set. But you don’t just want to produce good work, you want work that completely stands out, where everyone talks about it for weeks! In the classroom the passes are made up from communication, support, work production and ideas development. Just like on the field, everyone has to be playing their role to the best of their ability for there to be success, a goal or a work piece being finished.
One student said that sometimes his coach puts him in a position he doesn’t understand or doesn’t usually play and that he didn’t understand why. So we discussed that sometimes it is important to work out of your comfort zone and experience a role that is different, maybe to appreciate how difficult a task is or to develop a greater understanding of an element of the game. This is the same in the OLS where sometimes we have to undertake work or a role that we are not confident in or that someone else has told us to do. Even when we don’t want to do it, we have to so the work is complete. I said that I am sure they would not tell their coach or teammate on the football field that they are not going to play in the unfamiliar position. So why would they do that in the OLS when all members are striving for the same success?
Students agreed that on the field they would not just give up if they weren’t playing well or if a teammate was struggling or if they didn’t like someone. They all said that they would all play to the best they could to win.
So I encourage all students to take a bit of time to recognise their role on the field and the dynamics of a football team and adopt the same principals and strategies in the OLS. I think they will find that there will be far less conflict and more cohesion when it comes to working as a team. When this happens and all work (passes) are completed then the work outcome (goal) is more spectacular.
I have scored some pretty awesome goals in my football games, and attribute most of them to the supportive team mates I played with. I still relive many of those goals with them. I appreciate the teamwork skills I have gained on and off the field, and apply them in my daily work because, without them, I would not be able to celebrate the spectacular work that I, and my students, have produced.
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