Reflections on the Past……..
“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it.”
Dan Salzwedel, NMAA Executive Director
Perhaps the only true restriction we put on our lives as interscholastic educators and leaders is that we tend to restrict our ability to visualize the future. The capacity to conceptualize before we can realize is a basic pre-requisite of success in our laboratory for learning. Yet it is often suppressed in the real world and even in conventional education. As I attempt to force myself and others around me to conceptualize with a view of framing the future of interscholastic activities and its place within a child’s development in the future, I was struck by some recent research that affirmed the power of interscholastic activities and the interscholastic objective.
Based upon the resulE recently compiled from the NMAA Interscholastic Values and Success Traits Survey, I’m amazed at the staying power as well as the importance that activities play in the value selection of people far beyond their performance days in high school. We choose self-confidence, self-esteem, integrity’, fairness, goal setting, working under pressure, leadership, hard work and understanding one’s inadequacies as qualities to review. Each of these represent samples of success traits that are viewed as important ingredients to a successful career, in both private industry as well as key leadership positions in the public sector.
While female respondents did not express agreement at quite the same level as the male respondents, it is interesting to note that each of these traib were viewed as important to freir success in life. In fact, the older the respondent was who participated in interscholastic activities, the more they attributed it to the values learned through their interscholastic or junior and senior high school experience. In fact, based upon the survey, selected groupings from age 40-69, over 90 % attributed to a large extent (“mostly agree” or higher on the response scale) that they learned these traits and practiced them as a consequence of their interscholastic experience.
commentary suggests, as other research has indicated, that the interscholastic experience/performance significantly increases in value but is firmly ingrained during very early impressionable years. Further, it can be argued that the activity’ and coaches or sponsors have even more influence on kids than parents do during the same time frame in high school. It has been stated that in terms of influence on societVs future, the most important influence in a child’s life is either that from peers and/or coaches/advisors as well as interscholastic administrators. As Dr. Harry Edwards, a noted sociologist once said very prophetically, “frose who control the games children play, confrol society’s future” and really gave us a birds-eye view as to how important these roles are, as are the people who occupy them in shaping the future.
To further underscore its importance, it is notable to mention in the items analyzed, that people in the age group of 15-29 agreed that the values learned from activities were important. They firmed being taught the importance of each trait and realized the value paralleling the older adulG’ cognizance of its importance as they matured. Even with those who graduated more recently, over 70% of the respondents agreed that those values were largely attributed to their interscholastic experience. An enormous responsibility, yet a very rewarding one to those who view this area of education as essential to a student’s total development as a person.
It is also interesting to note the growth of the respondents as they related the stories from the past. People are often more consumer oriented early in their lives and eventually grow into contributors to society in one form or another, providing they have a suficient basis by which to develop into productive members of the citizenry. Activities play a very important role in this area and certainly create a foundation for success later on in life. Young people contribute to teams, to their lives, to other people’s development and growth, and are energized by the things they do best. The latter concept is very’ important as it establishes the map for the future, regardless of that student’s pursuit in life. Whether it is learning how to conduct oneself under pressure, using appropriate language, getting along with other people, work ethic, managing time, persistence, pride in what you do—all of these items again are inherently taught in tie experience we offer within the interscholastic educational arena.
A person’s ability to work with others, as well as understand and assist witl the implemenbtion of the future often determines whether they will be a consumer their entire life (someone who never seems to give or is always against—you know people like that), or a successful contributor to society. Make no mistake, if athletics in particular, coaches and administrators as the conduit for learning, doesnt properly teach the value premise and cause, as the research suggesÉ, studenÉ will perpetuate the mindset which harbors the past and never elevate to contributor status in society in their lives.
A number of years ago a document was created intended to assist student-athletes to achieve. It’s called the Elite Eight Steps to Developing Character for Life. Contributors are by nature positive, and the Elite Eight Steps respond favorably to the items for analysis.
Elite Eight Steps to Developing Character for Life
- Faith — You have to have faith spiritually in the future, both immediate and distant.
- Engage other people — Numbers create strength and give us the opportunity to reinforce a value system by testing its quality in recruiting others.
- Goal setting — You have to have goals, whether they be realistic or unrealistic, long and short-term. Learn to adjust privately to those goals and never allow yourself to be satisfied or to ultimately reach any long-distance goal.
- Believe in yourself — Athletic/activity experience, as well as performance, should and will firm the importance of a positive self-concept. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one will.
- Know your strengths and allow them to blanket your weaknesses.
- Be a planner — All great successes establish a plan, adjust it, re-establish a plan, adjust it again, but never lose sight of the fact that it is important. Create the conditions for success. In other words, strategize your moves and not be afraid to fail.
- Intuitiveness — The want and desire to be the best you can be, and regardless of pursuit stick with it by getting up again, and again and again.
- Ability — Ability, like timing, is relative. While good fortune is, by definition, association meeting opportunity. You are the ability to establish and pursue dreams—make the most of it.
Obviously, these attributes are as important today as they were yesterday, and are even more important for students to understand in the future. Do you have to be a star? Can strength of character be taught? Are some people more resilient than others? The answer to all of these questions is, “Yes.” But the more we can inculcate these principles for learning, the stronger our position becomes within the total education of every student paräcipant we come in contact with.
I read recently in a corporate periodical that a company’s goal is to have “an information source that originates at your desktop.” Harry Winder, the Director of Information Systems for this particular firm stated ‘%at you should be able to get on your computer and find the information you are looking for right now. You should be able to pull up information about any aspect of the company—anywhere. This is achievable.” What does this mean to us as interscholastic educators? First, to qualify, it has nothing to do with college scholarships or notoriety or any other superficial measure of success. The future of education lies within individual program learning, non-traditional classroom settings, and will impose restrictions upon human beings to interact on a daily basis (these will be self-imposed) that will create a paradigm, almost unimaginable by those of us in formal education today.
I submit that interscholastic activities (if we shape them properly) can help create the map for the future as being the principle of formal socialization for kids to learn and to practice all those qualities we considers synonymous with success later on in life. It could very well be fre only social engagement on both a formal and informal basis that students realize during their educational careers, Essentially, to become a contributor as an interscholasäc educator as well as to the student participants’ lives in the future is going to take on a whole new meaning, to say fre least.
As a footnote to the research that psychologisS will firm, is the notion that are far less resilient than young people are. The ability for all of us to map the future depends upon our capability to be resilient, to dream, to practice that battery of strengths we all participated in teaching young people we’ve had the honor to influence.
From the Association’s perspective, one only needs to “surf the Web” and allow the creative juices and imagination to fly as well as imagination to flourish, to realize that in the not-too-distant future well be communicating almost exclusively over that or similar mediums. EvenÉ will be televised over the Internet or similar medium. If framed properly, those in control of activities will shape socieW’s future. Let’s never forget the fact that the point of leadership is to encourage students to dream things that others cannot fathom. Let’s make it happen!