Why I love rookies (a tribute to Michael Finley)

I first encountered a basketball in first grade. It was 1992 and I was in Mrs. Carloni's class at Lancaster Elementary School. Predictably, my favorite time of day was recess when my friends and I would scramble outside to the playground to play basketball. I cared deeply about  understanding the game, learning it, avoiding breaking rules or drawing attention to myself, and being able to fit in. If I did something well....that was a bonus.  

Unfortunately, someone in high school had dunked on the one basketball hoop at the playground and the rim had broken off, so we were forced to throw the basketball against the brick wall of the school building where our gym teacher, Mr. Judson had drawn a small square about 7 feet up with chalk.

I didn't have a television at home, nor did I have a family that cared much for organized sports, so when everyone began scrambling to identify themselves as members of the Dream Team, I was at a loss. The first day I asked my friend, Derek, to pick for me. Luckily he told me to be Scottie Pippen, so every day I would yell "I'm Pippen!" before everyone else.

It was during these games that I began to learn that you don't score "goals" or dribble with two hands in basketball. Furthermore, passing the ball to your friends always made them happy and made them want you on their team. I also learned about boxing out, that nobody liked people who said "that was a foul" or argued when other people said, "that was a foul." There was always someone else who would say it for you if it was, or wasn't a foul.

The result of these days was that I became a pretty good teammate and I began to love the game of basketball. I eventually made a 5/6 travel team as a 5th grader, sprained my ankle in the first game and rode the bench for most of the season. I learned how much I loved playing. The next year I got a chance to start and our team played a ridiculous 28 games, winning 27 of them. I can hardly take any credit, though my best game came in our one loss to Lisbon (NH). I scored 14 points. Normally (as in, nearly every game) I would score 4. I was the epitome of a role player. I didn't make many mistakes. I listened to my coaches, supported my teammates, and I played hard (I like to think of the image below as a testament of my sixth grade ferocity).

During my 4th grade year we had had the chance to house sit for some neighbors who had PrimeStar which meant I could watch an NBA basketball game for the first time. The game I happened to see was between the Orlando Magic and the Phoenix Suns. I taped the game and re-watched it innumerable times. The Magic won handily riding Shaquille O'Neal and Penny Hardaway to 60 points. Most impressive for me, though, was a rookie named Michael Finley on the Suns. 

Phoenix was without their best player, Charles Barkley, and the rookie Finley was getting the start. He ended up scoring 18 points and leading the team. He was number 4 (my birthday was 4/4/84 and I would always try to choose jersey numbers that were somehow derived from the number: 4, 40, 44, 31 (3+1)) and had gone to Wisconsin (my mom went to UW-Stout and I had mistakenly thought that meant she'd been at Madison and rooted for the Badgers)...but most importantly, he was new to the NBA and the idea of a ROOKIE had never occurred to me. As a 4th grader, I too was new to basketball and though Michael Finley is like me...I'm a rookie. I'm figuring it out...it's all new.

To this day, Michael Finley is always my answer to the question, "who is your favorite basketball player?" and I love knowing the story. He was my first ROOKIE, my first connection to someone to whom I could relate and I loved his game as an athletic shooting/slashing 6'7" wing player. But it was his connection to my own experience that I loved. When he won a championship during my senior year of college, I rooted hard for him. By then I was a Celtics fan, but Finley remained the object of my NBA fascination and love. He signed a contract with my beloved Celtics in 2009 and played with them in the NBA finals, losing to the Lakers. In the middle of his career, he did average 20 points per game for five straight years and was named to a couple All-Star games. He scored over 17,000 points in his 16 year NBA career.

By the time he ended up on my team, he wasn't a rookie any more. He was a seasoned pro, but the next phase of his career (that of a movie producer of great films like The Butler) was awaiting. It was time to be a rookie again.

My basketball career lasted through high school. I was rarely the high scorer, rebounder, or assist-tosser on my teams. I was often, though not always, the captain.  I earned four technical fouls in my high school career. If there was one thing I was, though, I was loyal. Kind of like my affinity for that rookie I watched one night on the Phoenix Suns.

I wonder how many people out there have Michael Finley atop their Mount Rushmore of NBA stars? 

So what does Michael Finley have to do with my job as a teacher?

I love rookies and I think of my students as just that. They are 8th graders and in so many ways, this is their first foray into being small adults. They are on the brink of High School and THEY ARE READY. I love rooting for rookies and seeing them exceed expectations. I am proud of them already for whatever it is they become. They remind me that I, too, am new at so many things. And I love that. I love being reminded of all the ways I, too, am a rookie, still tossing a ball against Mr. Judson's chalk-drawn hoop on the playground and being a student of the game.

In Media Res

Here's the thing with writing a blog every week.

Sometimes there's just not time.

This has been one of those weeks, so I'm working with six (6!!!!) minutes this week.

Here goes.

We're in the middle of things (exam preparation, the annual World Congress Symposium, end of spring sports, spring fever...everything) and my students just finished up some amazing presentations this morning.

Like, they were out-of-this-world impressive.

Yet, there's more work to be done.

They presented on problems that are present tense problems.

Their solutions, though? They must be in the future perfect tense.

By this, I mean that the problems are going to be solved. My students taught me that. They are centered in a positionality that is hopeful and pessimistic. And I say that because "positionality" takes into account the conditions that caused a position to be adopted...this includes time and space and my students are in media res (in the middle of things).

They are amazing and fantastic and so involved in a really exciting time to be a young person.

As they reminded me today, the problems they believe they will someday solve are not their fault, but they are their responsibility.

You Can't Teach Poise

About a year ago I walked out of the auditorium at my school into the bright May sunshine. I had just finished watching the eighth grade deliver their World Congress speeches at our annual symposium. In groups of 12-17, they had researched topics connected to global concerns in the areas of Environment, Human Rights, Energy, and Health.

I happened to run into one of the student's parents as they waited for their child.

"You can't teach poise!" I said, and gave them a knowing look. They smiled back with a we're-so-proud-of-our-daughter look they had every right to express.

But this week, as I watch my students prepare for this year's World Congress that takes place next week, I am struck by the fact that they have developed poise.

My students have grown more confident, but I'm not sure I actually taught them how to do it. They have developed it within themselves.

Some things happen suddenly.

Others happen gradually.

(My friend Ben reminded me of that lately).

My students have poise, sure. But how could I be responsible? Next year, they will suddenly become high schoolers...but they will only be two months older than they are in June. Their growth into the mindset, and framework, and expectations of high school will be gradual.

This week I connected with two of my former students. One is a freshman in college, the other a high school senior.

The former of the two sent me one of his recent rhetoric papers. His topic? "The Prospect of Presidential Iconic Photography." The student's paper was tremendous because he looked deeply, tenderly, into the nature of our own perceptions of power and emotion. He didn't simply analyze trends and push to make correlations. He looked forward to the future to identify where we're going and how we might endeavor to think differently about our collective memory of our leaders and icons in a future where images can be so tainted and misperceived....but so, too, can our leaders and icons.

The other student sat in with his youngest sister during Grandparents and Special Friends Day. He spoke to me about the importance of schools in inciting change. "Mr. McDonough, just think about the position a school is in to mobilize people...the human capital is immeasurable, but so is the opportunity with transportation and adults to guide students to seize opportunity! Schools are the places that will change the world. They have to be."

How did I become who I am? I look in the mirror and I wonder who the man staring back at me really is.

These realizations have come to them gradually. Just as my own realizations have slowly dawned on me.

You can't teach poise, but you grow to have it by watching others and by having the confidence to take a risk. Poise happens both gradually and suddenly...we're thrust into the spotlight and poise is SUDDENLY demanded of us, or we practice and rehearse like my students do.

My students are delivering speeches next week. And they will have poise, but they will also have the opportunity to arrest the attention of their audience. They will speak, collectively, for thirty minutes. But for their individual two minutes at the microphone, they can do anything they want...they can make every member of the audience feel ANYTHING, and they'll do it with words, and they'll do it with poise.

I can't wait to let myself feel things as I watch them, strewn to the winds of emotion by the whim and fancy of my brilliant students.

things about getting a dog

My family decided to add a member to our family this week.

Enter Mollie.

Mollie is a 2-year-old doxle (a mix between a daschund and a beagle) who represents our first foray into the world of owning a pet as a family.

There are lots of things I'm beginning to process in my new life as a "dog person" and many of them connect to my world in the classroom.

Here are four (I'm sure there'll be more) things that apply to my work this week in the classroom

Thing 1 about getting a dog.

it gives us a sense of united purpose

Our whole family has this unifying sense that we have a job to do. The same is said for the classroom where never before has a greater importance been put on collaboration. Removing egos and our own desires from the equation increases our emotional intelligence and invites us to better understand others, showing them empathy, and eventually becoming a stronger team.

This week it's been beginning to focus back on World Congress which is two weeks away. Monday and Tuesday we will have alumni in the fields of Environment, Health, Human Rights, Energy, and Climate Change speaking to task forces to inspire them and remind them that the purpose of their research is the lifeblood of many people out there committing their lives to good.

Thing 2 about getting a dog.

it reminds us that we are not in control

Nothing says "you are not in control" like a doggie bath gone wrong, a pup who won't sleep, or that moment when I drop the leash just as a squirrel zips by. In my classroom experience, scrapping a lesson plan in favor of student enthusiasm is often the best course of action.

This teacher's guide to surviving Fortnite is my most recent foray into this area.

Thing 3 about getting a dog.

it it brings joy.

When my 4-year-old was in tears, there was suddenly an addition to Mom's lap to console him: Mollie's tongue. Post-dinner dance parties being interrupted by a thrashing, maniacal joyous solo? Yup. Definitely been some of those in the past week.

But it has reminded me, too, that I need to incorporate joy into my classroom each day. And, I mean, there's often joy, but I mean a deliberate, intentional break from the status quo to embrace something fun or funny or just plain student-directed.

This week it was inviting my students to write their own Hack PhD topics. I detailed them on my Twitter feed @MrMcDonough, so feel free to take a look. It was so fun to see them acknowledging the things they love.

Thing 4 about getting a dog.

it connects you to the people around you

No matter what, people stop and talk to you when you're walking your dog. I never knew this. The closest thing I knew to it was walking around with an infant, but even that felt more polarizing than having a dog. 

We need people. In schools, too. So much of school climate is beyond the Xs and Os of teaching. It's about the humans with whom we interact.

Thanks, Mollie.

the things we share

Two young people are standing at the front of my classroom. Sometimes they are identified as "my students," but that term cannot define them.

They are guiding the group of other young people in an exercise about the importance of words. Sometimes they call each other classmates, but that moniker won't last forever and most of them will drift apart and grow into adulthood on their own.

Today, though, they share a space and their ideas are interconnected.

The two students are leading a seminar in which they facilitate discussion around Isabel Allende's short story, "Two Words." The story is enveloped in magical realism and details the life of the mystical Belisa Crepusculario, a woman who "made her living selling words." She gives two words to "the Colonel," a political candidate and hardened man of war for whom Belisa has just written a speech. She describes him as "the loneliest man in the world." Intoxicated and overwhelmed by these two words, the Colonel's life is transformed and his existence takes on an entirely new trajectory.

They ask us to "write down 3 times that words...have had an impact on your life."

They come so easily to me. I jot down four.

A police report about a car accident in which I was the driver.

Two letters from teachers, each scrawled in the pages of a book.

A professor's rhetorical question, "You're not planning on majoring in English, right?"

Each of them has guided my life and sent me on a trajectory...but there have been so many more. I could list the words spoken to me by coaches, friends, parents, colleagues, my own children, that have pushed me forward, backward, or sideways.

These words matter so much, so when I think about my students and the ways they're growing up, and out, and onward, I'm overwhelmed by what I say (or don't) to them. 

So I'm writing them a letter. I'm taking a risk and putting words to what can't be said because in an age of distraction--an age where knowing who someone is requisite to understanding how someone is--we are attaching meaning to the things that don't matter...to interests and allegiances and preferences and hobbies. We don't actually know each other, we just know about each other. We dwell on the surface and we're lonely in the midst of the barrage of social media and a veneer of over-scheduled interactions. 

My letter is going to be a book. And it is a book of gratitude. And it is going to be incomplete. A draft. And I will solicit their feedback. And it will become a living document that they will play a role in refining for my students next year. I want it to enable them to have a conversation with me that will never end.

I have taught them so many things that they won't remember...and this letter will be both their final exam review as well as a reminder of all the things that DO matter...the things I want them to carry beyond my classroom walls.

I want them to remember a handful of words that they won't throw out when the exam is over. So I'm writing them a letter that is also a book. And, just like my two teachers who gifted me with words scrawled into the pages of books so many years ago, I will write them notes.

Those two young people are now guiding the conversation about how much words matter.

Maya Angelou was right..."people will forget what you said and what you did, but they will never forget how you made them feel."

I aim to tell my students how they made me think. I can't drive away the melancholy with two words like Belisa Crepusculario, but I can tell them how they made me feel. I can tell them the things I shared, the things they shared...the things we shared that have changed my life.