What’s Wrong with Participation Trophies?

              To hear James Harrison tell it… everything.  The sports world took a breather from fights during NFL training camps, court hearings on deflated footballs, and baseball trades and firings to focus in on James Harrison, the parent.  In case you missed it, James Harrison, NFL linebacker returned his sons’ trophies they had received for participating on a sports team.  His theory?  “I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best...cause sometimes your best is not enough, and that should drive you to want to do better...not cry and whine until somebody gives you something to shut u up and keep you happy."

                Ray Hennessey on Entrepreneur.com agreed.  He talked about our culture being “stained with entitlement”.  He also states in his article that “you cannot lose -- and therefore cannot learn from the loss -- if someone hands you a laurel along the way simply because you showed up. You will always feel like a winner, which will make you a perpetual loser”.

                Nancy Armour from USA Today Sports concurred.  Her article discussed how participation trophy proponents believe in rewarding effort.  However her theory is that “by handing out trophies and medals at every turn, it actually sends the opposite message, essentially telling kids it's enough just to show up.”

                I’ve struggled with this theory this week.  I have an 8 year old son who has participated in these types of leagues for football, soccer and basketball.  He gets a trophy at the end of every season, just like all of the other kids on his teams.  For him, the trophy is a reward for completing the season; showing up each practice and game, doing what the coach tells him to do, and having fun in the process.  He displays these proudly in his room.  That’s what his mother and I have instilled him.  Participate.  Be a part of something.  Try without concern for failure.  If you fail, challenge yourself to get better each practice, game, season, year.  But you have to be out there on the field or court to do that and I don’t have any problem with someone handing him a trophy for being willing to go out there.  There are a lot of other kids sitting at home who aren’t getting trophies.

                I stumbled on a Facebook post from momastery.com that my wife and I will be sharing with my son before he goes back to school.  The part I like the best about this letter to a child is the following:  “We don’t care if you are the smartest or fastest or coolest or funniest.  There will be lots of contests at school, and we don’t care if you win a single one of them.  We don’t care if you get straight As.  We don’t care if the girls think you’re cute or whether you’re picked first or last for kickball at recess.  We don’t care if you are your teacher’s favorite or not.  We don’t care if you have the best clothes or most Pokemon cards or coolest gadgets.  We just don’t care.  We don’t send you to school to become the best at anything at all.  We already love you as much as we possibly could.  You do not have to earn our love or pride and you can’t lose it.  That’s done.  We send you to school to practice being brave and kind.”

                I remember my Little League baseball days many (many) years ago.  I received a trophy for being on the team.  The coaches gave additional trophies to the ones who excelled.  I always strived for the top trophies but I felt good about myself walking away with my trophy for working hard each day and participating.  I’ve turned out okay.  I strive to be the best in my job and I’ve earned recognition for it.  And what’s even better?  My boss gives me a paycheck every other week for showing up and doing my best.  I don’t plan on returning it.

RESOURCES:

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/steelers/2015/08/17/james-harrison-kids-trophies-entitlement-culture/31870883/

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/17/james-harrison-is-right-winning-is-better-than-trying/

http://momastery.com/blog/

What Lance Armstrong's Admission Teaches Our Kids

I lost my dad to cancer.  I lost my mother-in-law to cancer.  My mom is a cancer survivor.  My father-in-law is a cancer survivor.  I wear a yellow Livestrong band on my wrist to remember the family members I’ve lost to the disease and those that have beaten it.  That’s what has made this last week so hard for me when Lance Armstrong admitted that he used performance enhancing drugs during his career and had vehemently denied it when accused by fellow riders and colleagues.  I have to admit that I chose to ignore the media that called us crazy for believing him (where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire).  I thought that these were just jealous people looking to bring down a national hero, cancer survivor, activist, and all-around good guy.  Nope.

As I have started to pull myself together, my thoughts have turned to how this affects the kids we all interact with daily.  Some would argue that no one under the age of 20 follows cycling.  Most probably don’t know who Lance Armstrong is.  If they don’t, they will because our mainstream media has inundated us with his story.  Kids are hearing how he successfully cheated his way to the top, buried anyone that spoke out against him, strong armed those that said they have evidence of his guilt and continued to build the conglomerate that is Lance Armstrong.  National hero, cancer survivor, activist, and all-around good guy.  Nope

We tell our kids that cheaters never win.  Except Lance.  We tell them that if they lie then they are bad people.  Armstrong built a cancer awareness conglomerate.  We tell them to treat people the way they would want to be treated.  Unless you’re guilty and want to keep people from proving it.  We encourage our kids to own up to mistakes when they make them to free their conscience.  So long as you wait until the statute of limitations runs out.

And then there is the whole Livestrong foundation to consider.  How do we separate the man from the mission?  How do we distinguish between wearing yellow to support cancer awareness but that we don’t wear it to support Armstrong?  My five year old son has never seen me without a yellow band on my wrist.  What will he say if I take it off?  “Dad, don’t you care about losing Pappaw any more?”  “No son, it’s just that I don’t want people to think I support the man who created the band.”  Can we teach kids that those are separate things?

Stuart Scott, anchor for ESPN, was recently diagnosed with cancer for the third time.  In an article by USA Today (http://tinyurl.com/aqnh6hg), Scott says that, “(Armstrong's) efforts that affected millions of people with cancer is his legacy. And you're not going to argue me off that."  I can’t bring myself to readily agree with him.  My dad admired Lance Armstrong yet never watched a Tour De France in his life.  I think he found comfort knowing that here was a man who beat cancer and wanted to help others beat it as well.  I don’t know what my dad would think if he were here.  Betrayed?  That would be my guess.  Scott doesn’t feel betrayed but how many do?  

I can’t bring myself to take the band off but feel like I’m disingenuous by leaving it on.  Maybe Armstrong felt the same way all of these years.  The yellow jerseys on his body a shackle keeping him from telling the truth.  Maybe that’s what our kids can learn from this whole ordeal.  Dishonesty, deceit, unethical behavior may allow you to prosper in the short-term but it becomes the prison that holds your soul captive.

Updated Blog Format

My intention for this blog for right now is to share resources via Twitter.  For those of you who don't have Twitter then you can come here to get the resources.

Tech Tuesday 4/12/11

http://www.diigo.com/list?token=aa36a6e2e9ae882554a4fba90694cdb2

Link to a great blog entry

Rather than writing a new blog this week (Yes, I still have writer's block), I thought I would share a great blog entry addressing "No Child Left Behind."  http://bit.ly/gvC7fe

4/5/11 - TECH TUESDAY LINKS.  http://www.diigo.com/list?token=43575d1da253baf4f2bc6b16f331d62b

Blog on Hiatus

I've been on a break from blogging for a few weeks.  I plan to return to a twice a month blog entry starting with the month of April.  I'll keep you posted!

"Bullying" and Tech Tuesday Links for 3/15/11

Last week, Dateline NBC did an outstanding segment on bullying.  The premise was to see what a child would do when he or she was placed in a setting where someone was getting bullied.  Would they stand up for the student?  The first setting involved two actresses picking on a third actress while unsuspecting teen girls watched.  The mothers of the unsuspecting teen girls were watching on hidden cameras and trying to decide if their daughters would stand up for what was right.  The other setting involved two actors picking on a third actor for not being athletic enough.  There were other boys that were in the setting and parents were watching to see what their sons would do.  In one instance, the “coach” who was in on the act, allowed the bullying to go on.  In that setting, the other boys involved participated in the bullying.  In another setting with a different group of boys, the coach admonished the bullying and said it would not happen again.  In this case, the other boys stood up for the student being bullied.

This was quite an interesting experiment in my opinion.  We hear so much these days about bullying in schools.  My wife and I were talking recently about what bullying went on when we were in school around 20 years ago.  I got picked on for a variety of things but nothing that made me think I was less worthy of a person than anyone else.  Nothing that was said or done depressed me.  I considered it teasing by my friends.  But I knew that I was a fairly popular good student-athlete so the teasing never lingered.  Someone said that today’s youth is different because once you go home, the availability of social media and electronic devices allow the teasing and bullying to continue non-stop.  I think that may be the major difference between then and now.  I keep hoping it isn’t that kids are meaner.

I worry about my son getting bullied in this day and age.  He is four years old and gets his feelings hurt easily.  But I also worry about him becoming a bully.  He’s larger than most kids his age.  My wife and I try to teach him to share and the appropriate way to interact with others but ultimately until he’s in a school setting without the watchful eyes of adults around, I won’t know how he’s going to respond.  I think keeping the lines of communication open and encouraging dialogue with him is one of the most important aspects of dealing with bullying.  I hope if I’m every asked to watch him on hidden camera to see how he deals with bullying, that I’m right and he’ll be the one standing up for the student being bullied.

You can watch the Dateline NBC video segments on bullying by clicking this link:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3032600

Tech Tuesday Links:   http://www.diigo.com/list/kitch_31/list-2011030718310222

"Finding Time" and 3/8/11 Tech Tuesday Links

I’ve been working with several groups of teachers in our county to “sell” the idea of finding time to collaborate with each other.  It hasn’t been a hard sell to the teachers.  It’s the administrators that have a hard time wrapping their minds around it because it usually means a change in the way a school’s schedule is designed.  As an added bonus, I’m also pitching the concept of finding time for student intervention in the schedule.   For elementary schools, both of these concepts seem to be easier to implement.  At the middle school and high school level I hear constantly that there just isn’t enough time in the schedule to do any of this.  Some schools have been using the same schedule for more than five years while others continue to tweak their schedules each year with little to no results.  One district paid a scheduling consultant to come in and meet with a committee to see how the schedule could be improved.  I think everyone is in agreement of the importance of teachers meeting to plan their lessons and discuss students.  I also think we all understand the importance of incorporating intervention time into the day for students who are struggling.  The hard part is finding the time to do so.  Some districts are willing to pay teachers to stay after to accomplish some of this work but in the end they are expecting teachers to make a choice between professional responsibilities and their personal responsibilities.  Unfortunately, we haven’t come up with all of the answers.  Everyone knows what is needed but getting there remains the problem.  I started talking to principals about the concept of changing the schedule and then realized some principals didn’t know how the schedule worked.  In several cases, the guidance counselors set up the schedule based on what teachers were available to teach a particular course.  This led me to believe that we needed to expand our circle for educating about the need for finding time.  I’ll be facilitating a round-table discussion of area middle school and high school principals about what can be done to the “almighty schedule” to allow teacher collaboration time and student intervention time.  I hope to have the audio portion posted at www.rpesd.org  after the meeting on Thursday March 10, 2011.  Next month, we’ll address the guidance counselors and get their thoughts.

TECH TUESDAY LINKS -  http://www.diigo.com/list?token=bcb99721e25070ff07d23032867e22b1