So I’m an educator, a mom of 4 kids who all love to play sports, a business owner, and a wife. There are many more hats that I actually do wear, but these 4 areas are the main ones in my life that I’m constantly trying to do a better job of. I’m reading books, I’m listening to podcasts about these 4 areas. But when I learn something in one of those areas of my life, I often see parallels to the other areas in my life.
Just recently I was listening to a business podcast that talked about the movie “In Search of Greatness.” So I jump over onto Amazon Prime to watch this movie, because it’s all about athletes who have achieved some sort of greatness. And so I’m going into this movie thinking about my 4 kids. But I get captivated into this movie, and all I could think about was how it can help us achieve greatness in education
I’m Christina Tondevold, The Recovering Traditionalist. And today we are in search of greatness in education in our quest to build our math minds so we can build the math minds of our students.
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In Search of Greatness movie
Now, fair warning, this video has nothing and everything to do with education.
The movie “In Search of Greatness” is about some of the greatest athletes of all time and some of the things in their lives that helped them achieve that greatness. And as I said, I really went to go watch this thinking about my 4 kids, who all think that they want to be playing professional sports. But when I was watching it, of course I was thinking about my kids, but I was also thinking about my other hat of educator and how all of these things that they were talking about really do apply as we are trying to help our students achieve greatness in education.
So here’s my biggest takeaways from the movie “In Search of Greatness” and how they apply to education.
Unstructured Play is Amazing
The first one is unstructured play is amazing. So in this video, they talked about one of these research studies that was done comparing the players who made the national German soccer team versus those who were just like one rung below those players. And the only difference they could find between these players was that the players who made the national team had a lot more unstructured play when they were little, like, just playing soccer in the streets, in their backyard. That unstructured play was a determining factor. It was one of those things that really made a difference as to whether or not those players made the national team.
Now, you guys know, if you’ve been around me for any time, I am a big proponent of play in education. So I saw this parallel right away when they were talking about it, that we can not just have structure, structure, structure in education. The kids need that time of unstructured play to make sense of that game, that content, in their own way.
Learning Procedures and Structured Plays Makes You Rigid
Takeaway #2 was that learning procedures and structured plays makes you rigid. Now, one of the examples that really stuck out in the movie was they were talking about how when kids are learning chess, if they don’t learn the big picture and instead they are taught the structured plays to make, they get to a point where they are stuck, because it doesn’t work out, right? If something happens and it’s not going the way that they are kind of used to, they don’t know the right next move.
We see that all the time, especially in mathematics, how if we focus on just teaching our students the procedure, if something happens and that procedure isn’t helping them or isn’t going the right way, they are completely stuck. They don’t have a bigger picture of the mathematics or that specific content within mathematics to help them think about other avenues. And honestly, we cannot teach them all the ways that it could ever happen, right? We need to help them be able to see the bigger picture, build creativity around that content so that in certain situations, they have a way that they can interact besides the structured rule or procedure that we’ve taught them.
What’s Measureable Becomes Important
Takeaway #3 was that what’s measurable becomes important. Now, in the context of sports, one of the big things that has come around lately is the emphasis on the sport’s combines, where all of these draft picks come in and they have to go through all of these tests, basically, to measure things, like how much they can bench press, how fast they run the 40. And they’re talking about how those measurable things have become what is important. But when you look at some of the greatest stars like Tom Brady and Wayne Gretzky, they do not perform well on those specific tests.
There are things that you cannot measure that are super important. But we’ve been so hyper-focused on measuring the things that are measurable, and we do the same thing when it comes to education. We are focusing on the things that are measurable. But that’s not always what is important. One of the big things that happened later in the movie was when Sir Ken Robinson was talking about how if the point of what you’re doing is the outcome of becoming number one, so he’s talking about the coach. Like, the coach’s focus is become #1, no matter what the price is. You pay that price to become #1, then is it really worth the price? Because we’re winning a game, but we’re losing interest.
We see it a lot in young sports. My husband and I talk about this all the time, with too much focus on win, win, win, that kids start to lose interest in the game. And I see the same thing in education. If our focus is on test scores and being #1 in those tests, we may get to #1. But 1) we’re testing things that are measurable and that’s not always what’s important and 2) we are doing that, often, at the sacrifice of students’ interest in the subject and their interest in learning.
They question the status quo
Takeaway #4 was that often these great athletes question the status quo. Now, it doesn’t mean that they were disrespectful. But they always wanted to know why. Why are we doing it this way? Why do we need to do that? And it wasn’t because they were questioning, like, why are you making me do this? It’s because they want to understand the bigger picture. And when they understand the bigger picture, often their brains are sometimes thinking about it differently than the coach. Like, they’re saying, “well, I can see that we could get there this way.” And maybe they think that that’s a better way than what the coach is possibly saying, we need to do it this way.
There are bad examples of that. For instance, they made a point about John McEnroe and how he came across as being very disrespectful and rude. But his point was that there’s a way that things should be done. And when we question that, like, we are looked at as being rude and disrespectful and not falling in line. And I think we see that a lot in math education, is that when kids see a different way to approach things, sometimes we can, as teachers, say, no, no, no, no, we got to do it my way.
I know that’s the way I was before I learned any other ways, it was, this is the way we do it. And if you’re not doing that way, you need to conform, or else you’re going to be marked wrong, basically. And that’s not the way we want to go. We want kids to be able to see that big picture and then question, is this the best way to do it? And we want to be one of those people that helps them with that.
They had coaches who helped build their creativity
Which leads us to #5, was that oftentimes these athletes had coaches who helped build their creativity. It wasn’t just, you have to follow my way. The coaches were like mentors. They helped that player play their own style of the game. They helped them hone their skills and become better players. But they were playing off of that player’s strengths. It wasn’t saying, hey, no, you’ve got to do it this way. It’s like, let’s take what you’ve got, and let’s just build it even better. They weren’t drill sergeants saying, you have to follow this play and do it my way and hit your mark of where we need to go. No, I’m going to help you build an understanding of the big concept of the game. And we’re going to use your strengths to help us achieve our goals.
We need to be doing the same thing in education. But oftentimes in education we are focusing on our students’ weaknesses. That’s what we are doing. Like, our test scores say we’re low in this area, so we need to focus on that area. But oftentimes a kid’s strengths can help build up their weaknesses. And so if we focus on their strengths and help build those, it helps them in their other areas.
The Coach Can Only Do So Much
Takeaway #6 was that the coach can only do so much, right? The coach can help their players hone their skills. They can help them understand the game. But when push comes to shove, when they’re out there playing, it is up to that player to make it happen. They can’t teach that player every single thing that would ever happen out there on the field. They have to help them understand how it works and then just trust that that big understanding is going to help them when they get to those certain situations that they’ve never encountered before, which goes back to number 2 and number 5. All of this helps make a player great, and it helps make our students great.
We, as teachers, have to realize that at the end of the day, it isn’t in our hands. When your students go to take their standardized tests, you aren’t there telling them what to do every step of the way, how to solve this problem and then this problem. But yet that’s what we do on a daily basis in the classroom, usually. Here’s these problems. I’m going to teach you how to solve them. And then you go and practice that.
That’s not what happens in a real-life situation. So why are we doing that as their practice day in and day out? We have to help them simulate what it’s going to be like to do it on their own, right? So we need them to be able to look at problems and situations that they’ve never encountered before and let them stumble and fall sometimes and fail so that we can help them in those failures and help build them up so that when they’re in those pressure situations of the test, they don’t sit there and say, “hmm, my teacher never taught me this.” They look at it and say, “huh, I don’t really know how to solve this right now. But I can figure it out.” That’s what we want to build in our students.
Those are my big takeaways from the movie “In Search of Greatness.” But I would encourage you to go watch the movie yourself and let me know, what are your big takeaways?
For me, the general theme of the whole documentary was to create a space for our kiddos to build up their creativity and stop being so structured with their learning, their practice time, and to really help myself understand that what’s really important for our children are usually things that are not measurable. All right, I hope that this helped you build your mind, not necessarily math related, but just your mind about what helps make our students great so that we can help build that greatness and build their math minds along the way. Have a great day.
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