The Bryson Buzz

My husband and I found a connection long before we knew we would one day marry-a love for baseball.  To say I love it the way he does is a falsehood, but nevertheless we enjoy watching games and talking about players today and of the past.  One thing that comes up time and time again is whether a player is a “for the love of the game” kind of player or one who does what he can to make the ridiculous salary of a professional athlete.  Someone who we agree falls in the the former category is Cal Ripken, the name who played a record 2,632 games in a row and spent his entire career with one ball club, the Orioles.  On the flip side of this is Alex Rodriguez, who got a ridiculous contract to play in Texas, but didn’t want to play there, so he transferred to the Yankees.  That guy makes more money per at-bat than my entire salary.  This same guy wanted to renegotiate his contract for MORE money (something like $300 million) or he would live New York.  YIKES!

Anyway, there is a point to all of this.  My “for the love of the game” analogy translated well into other areas.  For example, I use it when talking about Flemish composers of the Renaissance; they’re more like A-Rod than Ripken.  The same can be said of teachers sometimes.  And now I get to my real point/soapbox.

A few weeks ago I attended a workshop for teachers of all grade levels and subject areas from our diocesian schools.  Since the high school, where I teach, is going 1:1 with MacBooks, certain freshman teachers were required to come to learn about some software and tools that will be used with the laptops.  Some of these teachers would have never voluntarily given up their summer time to be at this workshop, while most of us came willingly and ready to learn.  As I sat and watched the other people around me, images of baseball players danced, well, slid in my head.  I saw teachers sitting around, not collaborating, not using the new tools we’d acquired.  Maybe it’s because I’m a “digital native” or maybe it’s because I started teaching in the 21st century and didn’t need to change my teaching habits, but the more I watched this, the more anger and disappointment festered inside of me.  Shouldn’t a teacher’s number one priority be making sure our students learn and are successful?  Shouldn’t a teacher be willing to adapt so that students can absorb information to the max?  Is it too much to ask to integrate something familiar to students so they may better find meaning and relevance to newly taught information?

So, back to my original analogy. I see a kind of collaboration between baseball players and teachers.  There are some of us who really try to make the most of what we teach, who are more committed to helping students; we are the “for the love of the game” people.  Then there are those “going through the motions until payday” people who cling desperately to dusty, 20-year-old lesson plans that reduce the amount of work to be done.  It’s lazy and selfish and every time I see one of these teacher it makes me continue my personal reflection and pursuit to better myself as an educator.

I will now step off my soapbox.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 11th, 2008 at 3:18 pm Filed under Uncategorized and tagged baseball, commitment, integration, Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.