Thoughts On Change and Learning

by Dan Salzwedel, Executive Director

While it’s quite obvious that a mountain of values are taught through the interscholastic educational process by both athletic and non-athletic activities, it’s also equally evident that it is not by design as it once was by most of our agents of interscholastic activities-coaches, administrators, etc. Learning should never be by chance, but rather by design. The interscholastic educational process has taken on a serendipitious approach, in that kids learn without having specifically identified the values to them, in some cases for fear of being held accountable. The latter is somewhat of a concern, while our genesis teaches us that values, morals and positive character are important tenets to our area of education, to call attention to any of those traits, particularly those that deal with behaviors that are not necessarily flattering yet are acceptable, have an unintended consequence of producing a contradictory message to the people who are our target audience- students and student participants.

Measures of success also come into question in that they’re not properly understood or practiced by the professionals in our midst, as it’s not the win, loss or championship but the behaviors we have learned from the experience that are important. Examples include the fact that winning a blue trophy, ribbon, or becoming the best physically is the principal measure of success, which couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s actually only a trial based on what we’ve learned as a consequence of the whole experience; i.e., persistence, perseverance, appropriate sportsmanlike behavior, handling stress without using inappropriate language, and other conduct which is not acceptable.

A colleague said recently that we have to change to stay the same. As we start another year, change will take place in all facets of our operation, as it has been for many years. As the billboards of character education in its purest form, national championships to one degree or another are on the horizon, state associations are becoming more involved in NCAA viewing camps for college coaches, coaches and officials education becoming more nationalized even though we have had marquee programs in our state, regulations in many different forms will be coming from both state and federal regulatory bodies that will pretend not to be involved in our operations but like local education are integrally imbedded in the process.