In Sportsmanship is SEL Part 2, we utilized a simple question that can unlock tremendous SEL potential, “What was the intended outcome?” While this can be useful in lower elementary with more mature students, it really comes into its own in upper elementary. From the last blog:

“This question gets to the source of the conflict in a way that does not make anyone good or bad. Instead, the motivations and intentions of the students become apparent (identifying problems). We can have a logical conversation about the choices and consequences made, and emotions can be identified and expressed with “if, then” statements. Because of enhanced empathy, we have a better chance that both parties will reach a satisfactory compromise (conflict resolution).”

Here is a quick review of the SEL skillset:

·      Self Awareness

o   Identifying Emotions

o   Expressing Emotions

o   Mindfulness

o   Self-Confidence

o   Recognizing Strengths

·      Self Management

o   Managing Emotions

o   Resilience

o   Stress Management

o   Impulse Control

o   Self Motivation

·      Social Awareness

o   Empathy

o   Discovering Differences

o   Diversity Appreciation

o   Civic Engagement

o   Respect for Others

·      Relationship Skills

o   Conflict Resolution

o   Active Listening

o   Cooperation

o   Teamwork

o   Communication

·      Decision Making

o   Identifying Problems

o   Solving Problems

o   Analyzing Situations

o   Goal Setting

o   Leadership Skills

So, what do we do with our mature upper elementary students and middle school students? Is there a way to promote sportsmanship past the definition they learned half a lifetime ago (be fun to play with, be fun to play against)? While it still applies, it’s simplistic, and we need something new to deal with the coming reality that they will be leaving the school pretty soon. Before they know it, they will be graduating eighth graders, and then high schoolers, standardized test-takers, college students, and so on. They are at an age when they can truly perceive the future that is coming ahead of them. We want them to be able to put things in perspective to guide their decisions moving forward. To do this, we must employ the SEL abilities of self-management and decision-making. For this age group, we have a new mantra, and it goes:

Value the Long Term Over the Short Term

From a strict sports perspective, this means we need strive for success in achieving the ultimate goal: a championship. We do this by creating smaller goals to achieve in practice as well as games, and those smaller goals are in service of achieving the ultimate goal. For example, a team works on passing in practice, which reduces turnovers in a game, which gives them a better chance of winning a championship because now they will turn the ball over less than their opponent.

Valuing the long term over the short term easily applies to life as well. The goal of each day is try and make it (and yourself) a little better than yesterday in whatever you are trying to achieve. Continually achieving little goals adds up over time, which accumulates into the achievement of a bigger goal. There are lots of big goals that we want to achieve in our lifetime, but they do not happen instantly, or by accident. They happen through small incremental improvements.

What about luck? I have heard luck described as “when timing meets opportunity,” but there is an underlying fact that the person also needs to be capable. They made themselves capable through their work, whether they knew it or not. There was no way I could have predicted the combination of all the skills I would need to be where I am today. However, because I have those skills through years of practice, I find myself in the position I am in, and I feel grateful for how things have turned out so far. When students ask us, “Why do I have to learn this, I am never going to use it?” One of the answers is they might use it, but there is no way of us knowing for sure. As educators, we are trying to give them the potential for as many options as possible. There is no way we, or they, can predict how their life will unfold.

Valuing the long term over the short term reminds me of a Swahili saying that my dad taught me. Before I get to that, if you are wondering, “Why does Nick’s dad know Swahili?” He was an associate professor of Swahili and African literature at Northwestern University for over thirty years. I owe a lot of my analytic and critical thinking skills to his ability to let me ramble on and on as a child, and then he would ask key questions that forced me to reevaluate my position. My mother was a Montessori toddler teacher for over thirty years as well. The apple did not fall too far from the tree in that regard. Contrary to what a lot of people assume about Montessori teachers of young children (they are all hippies), she showed me (and her students) what loving discipline looked like. She also had intense powers of observation, and she consistently revealed character traits of a toddler that forecasted the adult they would become to their parents.

Let’s get back to the Swahili proverb. It is, “haba na haba hujaza kibaba.” The literal translation is, “little by little, the container gets filled.” This is a beautiful metaphor for how a long-term goal is accomplished.

When I talk to the students about valuing the long term over the short term in regards to PE class, we talk about the maintenance of relationships (relationship skills). In PE class, no one day or game is worth the cost of a friendship. If we compromise our honor to win a game, now our classmate(s) see a cheater, or as mean-spirited. What was the point? While it feels nice to win a game, that is not the goal of PE class. The point of PE class is to learn through playing, practice sportsmanship, and get exercise that facilitates gross and fine motor movement patterns practice. Some games have winners, others don’t, but winning is not, nor it will it ever be, the ultimate goal of a PE class. Therefore, if someone values the outcome of a game higher than the relationship of a peer, they are making a terrible mistake.

When we talk about valuing the long term over the short term in regards to a team sport, maintenance of relationships is still paramount, but the outcome of the season bears some weight as well. It is possible to have a successful season and lose every game, but it takes a lot of subjective explanation to define the successes. Winning a game, or especially winning a championship, is a more objective measure of the success of the season. However, a winning season can be a failure if things were done to win a championship that ruin the players desire to continue playing in the future. Bobby Knight is a good example of a successful coach on paper but a failure of a coach on the human level, because he broke his players and killed their motivation to play. Becoming the villain that your own team must overcome by banding together against you is a poor way to find success.

Winning a championship is the objective long-term success marker, and a game the short-term goal. Doing the little things in practice continues to add up, and our growth as players makes us more prepared for the game. Playing game after game against different opponents teaches us more about ourselves than the opponent. It shows us what we have to do to continue to get better, especially when the competition is close. As the team continues to get better, they hopefully put themselves in a position to hopefully win a championship. Not only do individual performance need to increase over the season, but also the performance of the team. Team performance is closely tied to how much trust the players have with each other, and with the coach. Overly harsh words, resentment, envy, and other things that break trust erode the fabric of the team from the inside, and rarely does this team have long-term success. An insult in practice bleeds over to the degraded performance in a game, and a lost game that was pivotal for the playoffs could be the difference in seeding for a championship run. Conversely, encouraging a player who failed in the moment shows that trust is still there, and that player feels secure that they can still contribute to the team in the future.

Hopefully the students come to understand that valuing the long term over the short term applies to life as well. When we think of the SEL toolbox, valuing the long term over the short term utilizes all the skills of decision making: identifying and solving problems, analyzing the situation, setting goals, and leadership skills. This is why team sports in school are held in such high esteem. Whether adults realized it or not, they valued the social and emotional skills that good team sports practice in a setting that mimics how they will have to be used in real life. As an individual, we are simultaneously the coach and the athlete of our own lives. We have to strategize and make goals like a coach, and we have to put those plans into action as a player. Another term that gets thrown around (something Montessori schools seem to be especially good at) is executive functioning. It is the ability to make plans and act and act on them.

We love sport because it is the idealized version of how life should be. Rules are fair, and they apply to everyone equally. The daily grind that produces results over time is a microcosm for what it takes to achieve greatness in life. We celebrate those who are good at sport, but we especially celebrate those who are good at sportsmanship too. Someone who is a good sport understands universal truths about being a good person.

If sport is life, then sportsmanship is the way to live a good life.