Pop Quiz.
What did Santiago of Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" know that Michael Jordan knows?
How about perseverance, attitude and drive?
Hemingway brought those characteristics alive in Santiago's determined battle with the sea to catch a fish; Jordan brings them alive in his determined battles to catch title after title after title (after title?).
To some the connection might be a stretch. But to Joel Kirsch, president of the American Sports Institute and former sports psychologist for the San Francisco Giants, the correlation between Santiago and Jordan sums up the premise behind a relatively new high school course designed by the Institute.
The class is called PASS—Promoting Achievement School through Sport—and the premise is this: If there are characteristics of athletics that apply in life as well as sport, why not use them to teach students how to be successful in life and academics?
It is in use in 22 schools nationwide, including 10 in Chicago. Both Bogan and Kennedy high schools on Chicago's South Side started the class this year and offer it as an elective to all students, not only athletes.
"One of the missions of the Institute is to bring about a more balanced lifestyle here in the United States," Kirsch said. "We place an over-emphasis on (academics). Really what the program is about is the kids' discovery of who they are and how they operate through the study and practice of sport."
It is a full-credit, one-year course and was designed around eight Fundamentals of Athletic Mastery (or FAMs) that have been identified by Kirsch. They are concentration, balance, relaxation, power, rhythm, flexibility, instinct, and attitude.
The Institute trains teachers and provides the curriculum for $6,500. The classwork includes physical activities, as well as oral and written assignments.
"PASS is seen not only as a way to improve overall student performance, but also to elevate this country's respect for sport," Kirsch said. "Athletes have just as much mental capacity as a lawyer or a physician or a writer. It just hasn't been brought out," Kirsch said, suggesting that any doubters should peruse a playbook. "The perception is that athletes are not intelligent. Kids have lived down to the expectations."
That has not been lost on Shireen Tadros, 17 of the Ashburn neighborhood, the Senior volleyball player at Bogan said she feels that the class acknowledges that athletes are not limited in what they know. "It's about time they had a class where they perceived athletes as good off the field," she said. "This class brings out people's intelligence in more then one (area)."
Kennedy High School athletic director Diane Williams, who teaches a PASS course there, agrees. "Academics and athletics should go hand in hand," Williams said. "That's what this is about—the difference between an athlete and a jock."
Kirsch also sees PASS as a way to steer more students into physical activity and a more healthy lifestyle. The best example, he said, is the endorphin rush athletics provides. Another way to get that "high" is through drugs, he said. "The human organism craves this state," Kirsch said. "One way gives it to you in a healthy way. One way gives it to you in an obviously unhealthy way."
The class is structured so that students spend the year identifying, studying and applying the principals of the "FAMs" in an action plan they have developed for themselves. For example, a student basketball player could set an action plan to improve her free-throw shooting percentages from 50 percent to 70 percent and to increase her overall grade point average from 2.2 it 3.0.
Her action plan would include a detailed schedule about how she will apply all the FAMs in her personal, academic and athletic work. She would be responsible for monitoring and tracking her progress throughout the year.
Larry Braskamp, dean of the University of Illinois College of Education, said he was not familiar with PASS, but that the concept seemed to have merit. "It sounds like a way to tap into and build on a student's natural interest," he said.
At a recent early-morning Bogan PASS class, students began their day with a 15-minute concentration exercise. With feet flat on the floor, hands flat on the desk and eyes closed, the students sat in silence for 15 minutes.
"It's a great class," 16-year-old Omar Adams, a varsity linebacker, later said. "I never knew I could sit down for 15 minutes and concentrate on nothing... just my center (of balance). You just clear your mind and focus on your center."
And when he's on the field, Adams clears his mind to focus on the player coming toward him. "If the runningback is coming at me, I clear my mind."
Adams' class also worked balance exercises, including the "white crane" in which students stand on one foot with arms raised to shoulder height (a la "The Karate Kid" movie). In the "stand on" exercise, two students faced each other, and tried to push each other off balance by using the palms of their hands only.
The discussion that followed included how they could take that balance into their academic life. All agree that they could use it to balance time between school sport and social life.
"The things you already know on the field, you're going to transfer all of these and carry them over to the academics," Donna Florek, head of the Bogan High School physical education department and PASS teacher, told the class of about 40 students.
Kirsch reports that a three-way comparative study involving 187 PASS students showed improved academic performance over a control group of students. While 52 percent of the PASS group improved their GPA, just 31 percent of the control group did.
Tadros reports that she has improved from A's and B's to straight A's this semester. "When you take 10 minutes to concentrate on nothing, can you imagine how you apply (concentration) to your work" Tadros said.
Adams earned his first B in history. "I never thought I'd be able to get a B," he said. "I've got another year to put it to work" |
