1. Be relentless

Kobe Bryant did not just want to be good. His goal wasn’t to be better than all his peers. Kobe Bryant wanted to be the best ever. Go on YouTube and search clips of former teammates and competitors talking about the man’s work ethic. At the gym hours before a team practice in order to work on things for an upcoming opponent or working out at four or five in the morning during the off-season. Yes, he was talented. But he became one of the greats because his drive was relentless. We may take work home to stay on top of a class or work late hours to prepare a lesson. But all that is so that we can do our job well – not excellent. Staying ahead is, at most, all-star level and, at its least, merely status quo. To be a Kobe of teaching, we must set our own expectations high and be relentless in our practice, delivery, pedagogy, and reflection – day after day, “in season” or out. 

2. Be the sponge and then be the sieve

At Kobe Bryant’s televised celebration of life, Michael Jordan delivered one of the most touching farewells I have ever heard. The oft private Jordan told personal stories about Kobe that none of the public had ever heard. He talked about how aggravating Kobe was! Phone calls at 4 a.m. “Stupid” questions, as MJ put it, as well as minuscule inquisitions about everything from basketball to success, failure, finance, family and life. Listening to Jordan jokingly provide the audience with some levity under an utterly blue situation, I learned two things about my job as a teacher. I must be a sponge for knowledge and be intentional about the profession that I have taken on. I need to ask more questions to the people I look up to in education, regardless of how stupid those questions seem to them. And then, like Kobe did during the last decade of his life, I must be willing to pass on that knowledge to younger teachers and future educators who want to be the best at their calling. The sponge at first and the sieve once I think I have it figured out is what Kobe taught us.

3. Keep things in perspective

When it first really sunk in that Kobe Bryant had actually passed on, I thought about life. Not just my life, but my father’s and family’s lives. And life in general. That night in a group chat one of my friends sporadically texted, “I love y’all man. For real.” The next few texts that followed were grown men who had grown to become close friends telling each other that we loved each other and if anyone was going through anything or needed anything don’t wait. In teaching, we often get so upset at things that will never even matter at the end of the day. Who got what supervision duty or who got assigned what course to teach. We bicker about some real trivial shit as teachers, I gotta be honest. Becoming more appreciative of the fact that we get paid to give back to the next generation and have relative autonomy in doing so is something we ought to consider every single day, regardless of how much of a grind it becomes. Because Kobe taught us, too, to appreciate the grind. 

Pulling together a bunch of Kobe Bryant’s most motivational quotes and using them in your classroom will more than likely keep the kids engaged for another day and might build on a few things you’ve really been trying to deepen within your classroom. And that art lesson using Kobe’s jersey or likeness is probably needed in your school, because representation on the walls in our buildings does matter. But sometimes we teachers need to take what happens in the world and utilize it for our own learning. Surely, Kobe Bryant’s life and legacy is one of those instances. Rest in Peace, Bean. 

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I am by no means claiming to be some cocky jock, but I was never cut from a team while in school. Actually, that is a lie – I was cut from a volleyball team in middle school but the experience was so insignificant to me that I am only recalling it as I type. However, I can sympathize with those students who come hoping to make a team and eventually fail to see their name on that final list. That is why the hardest part of coaching a school team is making cuts, beyond a doubt.

As we spent some time in the morning going over the list, we had about seven boys that we knew had “made it”. There was another cohort that hopefully assumed their “career” as basketball phenoms would be on pause for their 8^th grade year. And then there were those fickle five or six boys that made (and will forever make) the prospect of coaching a team more difficult than delivering a lesson on quantum physics.

At the end of the day, we put up the list of boys who made the team. I watched as some who thought they might have the slightest chance at making the team, maybe even hoping for it throughout the entire day, walk up and look at the list. They would look a few times to make sure that they hadn’t somehow glanced over their own name by mistake, only to finally come to the realization that their hopes for making the team were dashed. No name – dream on hold.

It was hard for me to watch. I took more of an observable interest in the students who did not make it rather than share in the pleasure of those that did. Making cuts is like tearing a Band-Aid off after a deep cut. And like all other things, self-esteem and confidence come in many different ways. Driving factors are not all the same for each child. So a kid who got cut this year may give up basketball forever. But maybe one of them uses this sting as a driving force to improve. Some of the best men, women, and businesses are built through these types of experiences and are successful because of their failures. And on the basketball topic, the goat Michael Jordan himself, was cut from his high school team; look how he used that to fuel his motivation. He didn’t turn out so bad.

Hopefully the cut ones learn to live by the motto that “whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. And as a coach and teacher, these are life experiences, motivations, and factors we must deliver. These are teaching moments not in the curriculum. Not everything that needs to be learned or experienced will happen in the classroom. Of course, there any different philosophies and opinions regarding how one ought to cultivate student esteem and desire through sports. But in this situation, the way I was taught is the way I am going to teach, regardless of the apparent generational differences that are ever so present in today’s world. Sports are not the same as academics. One is mandatory, one is voluntary. So the same rules need not apply. No one says you have to try out for the basketball team. If you do, you should be prepared to deal with the consequences. In academics, things are a little different. You have to take math and language class, whether you like it or not. Cuts do hurt, but each educator has their own philosophy on sports, participation, and success. And that is as important as winning and losing.

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The summer is a time to relax. But the best athletes in the world don’t use their off-seasons to sit back and spend their millions (In case you want to argue with that point, I said the best athletes, not all athletes). Those who become All-Stars do so by putting time in when no one is watching. The teachers who become the best at their craft do not get there by simply carrying the same mentality into each new “school season”. They become All-Stars by growing to understand that each year is truly a “new” one.

How do teachers grow?

Every educator knows the easy answer to this. Good teachers devote a portion of their summer to some type of professional development. And the PD I am referring to doesn’t have to come in the form of traditional PLCs. I am alluding to the type of development that fosters a growth in mentality. Twitter chats, reading books that change an outlook one held, and simply reflecting on the positives and negatives of the last “teaching season” are what turns teachers into All-Star educators.

There are many teachers who will go back to school and use the same approaches they’ve used for the last ten years because their idea of education is built on the presumption that, regardless of generation, all kids need to learn a certain way. There are teachers who will step back into their classroom with a new set of students and photocopy the same worksheets they’ve used for the last ten years without the slightest inkling that perhaps children born in 2002 learn and respond differently than those who were born in 1992. There are teachers who neglect and malnourish children from the first day of school because they assume he or she is the same exact student from a year ago; they will treat “Deshawn” the same way they did for the last two years without giving the kid an opportunity to demonstrate his maturity or his growth. The same thing year in and year out. But we expect our students to grow, right?

All-Star teachers do not do this. They develop their “game”. They start every season understanding that “last season” has no bearing on this one. They take the break to re-evaluate and grow. All-Star educators understand the deepest meaning of the word “new”. Fortunately, the difference between sports and school is that in education every teacher can be an “All-Star.”

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I initially decided that I wanted to teach because, as someone who was so indoctrinated by the cycle of sports, I simply could not come to terms with working every weekday of every week with essentially no end goal. I have tremendous respect for people who do jobs on a daily basis without the “light at the end of the tunnel” so to speak. But after coming to the realization that athletics was not going to pay the bills for me, I couldn’t help but think about how much school and sports are connected.

Now I don’t want to be misunderstood, I did not decide to get into teaching because I wanted summers off. But as someone who ate, breathed, and literally slept sports throughout the majority of my life, I could not realistically picture having a career that was not, in some way, rooted in the cyclical aspects that are common to all sports; especially the qualities of the “season” and the “off-season”. To me, each new school year seems like a new season. It is not exactly a football or basketball season, but I still feel like the months of September to June are “in-season” for teachers. Every new “academic season”, all that are involved in education grow; we go through high points and low points, we test, we communicate, we coach, we have hard days that are rough on our minds and bodies, and sometimes we have lighter days. During this “academic season”, everyone in the school building works toward a common goal. That is to complete the “season” to the best of our abilities and to one day be able to look back on that school year with pride. Our “championship game” is won on that last week of the year when students are promoted to their next grade.

So, you see how school is a lot like the sports world in my eyes. At school, no two days are the same. In football the saying goes, “on any given Sunday,” because no two games are the same. In football, you must work together as a team to complete a common goal and you must learn to work with people from diverse backgrounds with different strengths and weaknesses. In sports, you learn to figure out which tactics are successful and which ones are not through trial and error and experiences. This is what also happens inside the classroom, in the halls, in the science lab, in the gymnasium, on field trips, and anywhere else inside and outside of our schools. Teachers learn how to deliver their program, teach students, and manage behavior through experience and trial and error. Having a background in sports and playing the game of football my entire life up into adulthood, I came to the realization that becoming a teacher would be the most rewarding and natural profession that I could be a part of. It it what I refer to on most interview questions. It is a main reason why I decided to become a teacher.

Now that I have completed my fourth “academic season”, I enter the off-season (summer break) with some mental and emotional conditioning that I need to complete, not to come back to my classroom bigger, faster, and stronger for next season, but to come back wiser, sharper, and ultimately, better as teacher.

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I am weary of wading into the political waters of positioning sports in a savior role in relation to our Black males. While I understand the analytical argument against sports being pushed on Black males, I disagree with part of it. The overriding intellectual sentiment follows somewhat along these lines: Black boys typically ascend towards three pre-determined life roles – the athlete, the entertainer, and the criminal. All three roles are due to limited representations of the possibilities of Black masculinity as prescribed through the medium of popular culture. The sports and entertainment industry are saturated with Black males.

Out of the three roles, the athlete is the path that the young Black male can pursue most avidly through school. He can join sports teams and excel. In fact, in most cases, the cyclical stereotype of Black males being superior athletically leads many people in positions of authority implicitly or explicitly pushing the Black male towards sports. This is one of the only areas in which the Black male is accepted and appreciated.

As the Black male becomes encouraged to pursue athletics due to his “obvious” inclination towards it, his success almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. He is told he will be good, so he takes this positive reinforcement and practices more often. Because teachers and adults around him have helped foster his self-esteem in this area, he devotes the time and effort into it, and he eventually does become good at sports.

Now here is where most find the problem of sports: demonstrating how Black boys are arrested into confining identities. Many argue that blacks could equally be inclined to succeed in areas of academics, but due to the meta-narrative of how structural racism works in schools (and the world, writ large), they are not. Instead these hyper-masculine bodies are pushed into sports. The problem with this is that a career as a professional athlete is extremely unlikely and the skills these Black males spend hours, days, and years honing become useless once they give up the dream.

Think about it like this: if a white kid wants to become CEO of the next big online company because he idolizes Mark Zuckerburg, he still comes out with the tools necessary to succeed in the real world whether or not he accomplishes this goal. But a Black kid wanting to become the next Lebron James will have a mid-range jumper and court vision that will do nothing for him once his dream ends (other than on Friday nights at his local community center). White boys are being pushed into areas where: 1) they have a strong likelihood of succeeding, and 2) even if they do not succeed, they will have built strong traits and habits that will undoubtedly help them succeed as professional adults. With the focus on the narrow scope of athletics, Black males come out of high school with a killer crossover and a consistent mid-range J but nothing else. That is the prevailing idea of how sports serve to stunt the progression of Black males.

I agree with most of this assertion. Black boys are being pushed into athletics. Because they are being pushed and encouraged, it does become a self-fulfilling prophecy of quasi-success. This encouragement of the Black boy could very well be used in areas of academics instead, but it is not. This is all due to the undercurrents of structural racism that permeate our culture. However, what I do not agree on is the idea that sports leaves the Black boy tool-less once his dream is over and he stops competing officially.

This logic is understandable but it is not complete.

I was one of those Black boys who was pushed into sports. I can safely say that I was obsessed with sports way before anyone ever took a liking to my athletic potential and chose to rear me in that direction. As a young Black male, sports became the focal point of my identity. And in high school, I was fine with that. Because of all the other experiences with academics that I had internalized, I knew I wasn’t going to be recognized for anything else, especially if I continued to embrace my urban culture. So I took sports and ran with it. I played every sport with passion and took pride in succeeding. I took every type of gym class high school offered. I listened in gym, obeyed the rules, arrived to that class on time, even early, and tried to spend extra time there once it was over. I was engaged during that period. I felt appreciated, I felt important and I felt capable.

As I began to specialize in football and really take that seriously, I did whatever it took to try and earn a football scholarship. While other students were hanging out with friends after school, experimenting with gateway drugs and playing video games, I was with a few friends (or by myself) in the gym training my body. Instead of watching regular TV, I was getting in as much football as I could. By this time, I set goals for myself and everyday I thought of those goals, trying to attain them. I became part of a football community, learning the who’s who and networking with peers and coaches all around. I travelled to combines and camps, trying to hone my craft in the hope of reaching the next level. During my season, I not only wanted to be successful personally but I wanted the team to succeed. In the medley of different kids who were engaged to varying degrees, getting everyone to focus was a task unto itself. I did this for years. So, you mean to tell me that when I had reached the pinnacle of my sporting evolution and sports for me stopped, all I was left with was some sleek footwork and an impressive vertical jump?

I think not. I have sports to thank firstly for getting me through the bores of high school. If it were not for the anticipation of a practice or an upcoming season, I do not know how successful my academic career would have been. If all I had to focus on was school and the reality of what was awaiting me in the real world sunk in, I would have become depressed! But I did have sports, and that was like an imaginary friend, yielding hope and encouragement as I progressed through the school year.

Who knows where I would have been if I didn’t have sports as my foundation. Would I have even gone to university? If I wasn’t athletically gifted with certain genetics, that with a little hard work could be molded and help me earn a sports scholarship, who knows if I would have even survived through high school.

If you had told me in high school that I would turn out to be an elementary school teacher whose primary hobby was reading literary, non-fiction works concerning race, social justice and modern culture, I would have laughed at you and told you to put down the dutch. Point being, we all evolve. There is nothing wrong with a 16 year old boy being passionate about sports and aspiring to reach the top. It does leave him with so much more than a jump shot. Alluding to my experience in sports and as a member of a team has come up in every single job interview I have ever had. Sports teaches the young man so many other foundational qualities that every person needs. Most sports are team sports and the ability to cooperate is one of the fundamental factors that drive this world forward. Team play fosters enhanced empathy and instills a sense of responsibility for others. These are things you subconsciously pick up as you grind through a season with your brothers.

Most importantly, a sport has the ability to instill personal confidence. It allows a kid to believe in himself and build his self-esteem through a performance, a practice, or even one good play. Sports lay the groundwork for how setting a goal and accomplishing that goal is to be bridged. It gives you a blueprint early in your life on how sacrifice and determination ought to be practiced. The list of things that sports do for a kid, especially those kids who receive little appreciation in other realms of school, goes on. So please, do not tell me that when a Black boy is finished playing sports he is left with nothing. He is left with a whole lot, he just has to begin to learn how to use it.

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If the Black boy was striving for acceptance amongst his peers as validation for his Blackness, what he struggled with was notions of how academia fit into it all. Sports, street smarts, charm and charisma, and aggression were all equally laid out to us. In order to hone our craft in any of those areas, all we had to do was turn on the TV or listen to our music. Examples of Black males “performing” in those categories and gaining validation were in abundance. As far as any of those character traits went, there were several embodiments along our path to emulation and validation that we could select from. All we had to do was pick one. Heck, we could pick a few.

What was not present in our repertoire of identity construction was the realm of academia. With all our other markers of what makes a cool and official Black male, “earnestly intent on succeeding academically” was not in there. It was nowhere close. What got lost in the shuffle of fostering our own validity through “‘kinshipping’ with our boyz” was the actual attention to the lessons and lectures our teachers were delivering. Through middle school and as I eventually moved into high school, those lessons, experiments, and projects were not really a priority for me at the time. In order to solidify my reputation and identity, I was more focused on honing my craft in athletics and my perception materialistically. Baggy jeans and t-shirts, fitted caps, and doo-rags were offset by huge chunks of cubic zirconia in my ears and a gaudy silver chain around my neck. It was the early 2000s and my swag was on point. I looked like every other Black boy at the time. In school I also, to a certain extent, acted like every other Black boy at the time. I felt I had to if I wanted to remain in this ever-important popularity contest of high school. It was no holds barred and the only areas that you could afford to give up ground were the areas on the fringe, the areas that weren’t lucidly outlined already. Unfortunately, we saw those main fringy areas as the classroom and academics.

It was very hard being Black and wanting to do well in class. I faced a perceptual struggle almost every day. I was battling on more than one front as well. The guard I had put up left me vulnerable to teacher subjectification and discretion. I had never explicitly expressed intentions of succeeding in class. My attitude towards academics was passive. I took it as it came; the good, the bad, and the ugly. Because of that, I without a shadow of a doubt guarantee that I was viewed in a certain light by my teachers. Because I was satisfied with my 80% or 70% and lightly upset with my 60% (aggression is a trump card in the construction of a Black male identity anyway), I continued to be pigeon holed by teachers, receiving mediocre grades.

The “teachable moments” and attention to detail that came on the football field or in preparation for a school talent show were never existent by any of my teachers during a regular class. As I moved through my final years of high school and started to excel in sports (and consequently started to excel in academics), teachers and myself would have many conversations about how I could do this or that on the field in order to improve my “game”. There was invited access to frank conversations with teachers when it somewhat concerned my plight in sports. But as I changed out of my gym clothes and donned my baggy Levis 501s and strolled back to class, stopping to chat up a few females along the way, consciously coming a few minutes late in order to “make an entrance,” those frank discussions regarding my life’s plight dissipated. My relationship with the academic side of school and my classroom teachers was as stale as yesterday’s toast. And this was both my fault and my teachers’. I did not know how to appear vulnerable and concerned in regards to my schooling. My teachers did not know how to read beyond my appearance and demeanor. Thus, we were stuck in this perpetuated cycle of comfort zones and stereotypes. So we went on with our daily lives, swallowing whatever rough patches we had to experience, all the while subconsciously accepting the simplistic notion that “this is just the way it is.”

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Since it’s Super Sunday, I thought I’d share a few of my thoughts on football, race, and life. And especially my thoughts on this idea of the American Dream myth. Last year at this time, the Richard Sherman story was one of the most heralded narratives in the mass media. Here we have this kid from Compton who ended up at Stanford and is now living out his childhood dream. Sounds great right? We naively look at this and tell our youth, “see all you have to do is work hard and you will get what you want.” Not so fast. This story is not about how hard work is the key to success for all. This story, if you boil it down, is about the ways in which Black men are allowed to succeed in a system of perpetual hegemonic rule. If you do work hard in sports you will be afforded the opportunities to succeed as a Black male. This hard work pays off ethic is not true for all endeavors. What about those Black males who are not athletically inclined nor particularly interested in sports? Does this same hard-working “American Dream” hold true? Unfortunately, I would say no.

The Richard Sherman story is a great one indeed but we also have to keep in mind how some of these narratives extend our ideas of popular knowledge. The Black male as “the brute” is one that has detrimental psychological consequences on many of our Black youth. Pushing Black males into sports because they are “naturals” does nothing for the majority of Black boys. On the contrary, it simply maintains the status quo by implying that if you are Black and a male you should pursue sports, because if you work hard there you will be rewarded. That same meritocratic paradigm does not lend itself to other avenues of life. I rarely see Black boys being pushed into academics like science, math, politics and so on. This Sherman story lends itself to the theme that “to succeed in the United States, an individual only has to work hard” and also that “one can realize their dreams in the United States if they are willing to work hard and pull themselves up by the bootstrap”. While this might be true for some people, it is not true for all. For Black people, especially Black males, there are only marginalized contexts in which this is true – sports being one of them. So while you continuously hear these broadcasters and journalist talk about how Richard Sherman is such a great example for kids, keep in mind how closed the context really is and what these people are really saying (or not saying) about Black masculinity and culture.

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