Using Sports as a Coping Mechanism

Topic:

Using sports as a coping mechanism to escape the unfairly biases and slanted environments surrounding sympathetic characters.

Rationale:

            My target audience is 7 – 9^th graders. I want to delve into serious issues that are scarcely talking about in school such as blatant racism, death of loved ones, self-mutilation, physical disabilities, and identity crisis’. These issues occur more than I would prefer, thus my decision to create a text set that provides an outlet for students coping with these issues: sports activities within novels. Each novel provides an inner or exterior hardship that makes their living situation difficult. Through sports, characters are able to find a niche, support system, and consciousness of how to overcome their given situation. I feel that students practice a wide variety of sports at my target audience’s age. When I say practiced, I do mean that the students might not necessarily have to completely devote or commit themselves to the sport. Students can play a sport to fill time or occupy themselves from the atrocities in their surrounding environment. Hence, why I feel my target audience can make real-life applications based on the texts from this set.

Novels:

Alexie, Sherman, and Ellen Forney. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. New York: Little, Brown, 2007. Print.

I chose this adolescent novel because I feel that many students in my target audience, 7^th to 9^th graders, are searching to find their niche and identity. Adolescent student’s transition into high school and the rest of the future may be confusing, which is why I feel literature on cultural self-awareness and identity are crucial. I feel this hold especially true for English Second Language. Trying to find one’s identity while feeling pressured to assimilate to a societies norms may be taxing. Junior/Arnold, the main character of the novel, experiences this confusion of wanting to either identify with the Native Americans on the reservation, who represent his indigenous culture, or the dominant white culture, which sees provides opportunity for success at the price of abandoning his Native American roots.

            Having my target audience see the positives and negatives through another characters eyes may help them sift through their own confusion. Basketball in this situation plays the role of segregating and uniting him to both cultures. But despite separating his identity from each culture, the acceptance and warmth from both sides (on any given moment) provides a positive outlook for any viewer. And in the end I want my target audience to know that maximizing opportunities and remaining true to your native roots are both feasible in the same outcome. 

Crutcher, Chris. Running Loose. New York: Greenwillow, 1983. Print.

I believe the theme of coping with death is a topic that many students within my target audience can relate to and often struggle to find a solution. Sports were the outlet in this case. Crutcher’s novel, Running Loose involves a high school senior, Louie Banks going through a rough stretch of events including being thrown off the football team for arguing against his head coaches blatant racist actions towards an opposing player and the death of his close girlfriend. Louie originally uses track to distract himself from consistently morning the death of his girlfriend, but this distraction eventually morphed into a coping mechanism. Louie would contemplate how she would want him to live his life and be upbeat.

I found it symbolic that Crutcher used an individual sport such track, instead of football, to overcome the atrocities (racism and portrayal of his girlfriends death). Football is a violent and unjust sport, where the fans create a hostile environment. Symbolically racism is embedded in football. Racial epitaphs all allowed and, for the most part, accepted within the football realm. By running track over football, Louie is standing up against the shortcoming of those engulfed in the football realm. He is self-empowering and separating himself from the unjust sport of football in an attempt to find his voice.

Though the irony is that Louie is running in track, but is he truly running away or searching deep within himself to identify how to overcome tragic life experiences? I feel students would enjoy engaging in a discussion on what does it mean to  “truly” run away from your problems? What constitutes as facing your demons head on? What sports outlets would facilitate them through their struggles? And how would you know that you successfully overcame your tragic experience? To allow students to feel more comfortable before engaging in a discussion, I would suggest students to write about these questions in a journal, responding to them periodically over a weeks span. After the week, I would see what reflective thinking was created and how other students can relate to one another’s responses.

Myers, Walter Dean. Hoops. New York: Dell Pub., 1983. Print.

 

I wanted to include a novel that delved into the frustration of school and poverty levels. Walter Dean Myers uses basketball as an opportunity to escape. Lionel, the main character has potential to play college basketball and maybe even turn pro, but the obstacles in front of him only hinder those opportunities. 

Lionel is faced with many choice, including throwing a championship game. I want my target audience to examine situations and decide whether or not sticking by your morals will benefit you short and long term. I feel students from my host school this semester could relate to this novel, especially when many aspects of life seem stacked up against them (that no matter what choice they choose, it is wrong). Being persistent and confident in oneself is crucial and I want my target audience to understand that. 

Levenkron, Steven. The Luckiest Girl in the World. New York: Scribner, 1997. Print.

This text is a borderline 9^th grader text, almost not ranging in my target audience because of the issue that the main character deals with: self-mutilation. Many schools stray away from this issue, but there has been a growing concern in recent generations for this topic to be ignored. I wanted to use this text to provide a character that faced the adversity, attempted to achieve perfection, reached the lows in life only to come out victorious and in control of their lives.

Skating happens to be the sport, which is ironically has an association with grace and perfection… the exact opposite of the connotations associated with cutting oneself (there is also a scene where the main character slams her hand in a locker door to keep herself focused). The pressure to be perfect for an adolescent can be strenuous. I want my target audience to identify with his text and be able to make real world applications. Again, I do not feel all students can handle the graphic nature of self-mutilation. So, the text should not be taught at the lower end of my target audience.  

Short Stories:

Crutcher, Chris. "Goin' Fishin'" Athletic Shorts: Six Short Stories. New York: Greenwillow, 1991. Print.

Similar to Crutcher’s other text selection, this short story addresses losing a loved one. In this text, the man character, Lionel, loses his family in a drunken boat driving incident via one of his childhood friends. In this situation, another individual sport is used: swimming, which is ironic the same terrain of his families death. The short story delves into the concept of how a tragic incident can affect more than one person for an extended time – if not their entire life. While Lionel uses swimming as an outlet to cope with the lose of his family, Neal, the drunk boat driver, resorts to drug usage. Neal ran away from home and appears to be struggling with finding an adequate coping method.

I want my target audience to be able to see a story through multiple perspectives. In this story, students can engage in which character found an adequate coping mechanism?  Now, while Lionel may not have fully healed through swimming, he has a strong support system and a space to escape. The strong support system is mainly friends that turn into family figures. But at the same time Lionel has an escape place (living alone off of family’s will and support from government) where he can vent frustration and sort out his frustration. Neal has nothing. Drugs have led him in a downward spiral, as he was not able to cope from the incident.

At the end of the story, Lionel, through the help of his support system, seeks Neal in an effort to tell him that he has been forgiven for the death of his family. I want my target audience to identify that through swimming, Lionel was able to find a cohort of friends that became his new immediate family. Through the strength and support of his friends, Lionel is able to find the will power to affect another’s life (forgiving Neal) just like they had done for them. The target audience will hopefully understand that despite swimming being an individual sport, the comrade nature of sports can defeat any atrocities in the surround environment or one’s past. Real world connections and applications are endless for my target audience.

Films:

Remember the Titans. Dir. Boaz Yakin. Perf. 2000. DVD.

The setting of the film is a segregated Virginia during the Civil Rights Movement. To begin the film, a black and white high school close down. As a result, both schools are forced to integrate at the same, new, and bigoted high school. The surrounding environment and community are hostile towards the notion of integration, especially within he sports realm. Via football, the director, attempts to marginalize racial tension, while striving to unify the learning and social communities. A black member of the community is appointed head coach over a qualified white coach. Both are worthy of the head coaching position, but the community becomes enraged by the racial tension from the community bleeds into training camp and locker room.

Two sets of goals: overcoming the racial atrocities within their community and football team; once the racial tension subsides within their own football team, the ignorance and arrogance of other racist communities becomes an obstacle, as their victories are viewed as irrelevant and marginal. I want my target audience to examine racial tension and how sports can become a unifying factor; despite the bias environment, a team can persevere and overcome anything set forth in front of them.

This movie is uplifting and an ideal example of team/classroom building. My target audience could apply the camaraderie and teamwork to the classroom, where the learning environment becomes a team trying to overcome testing or other bias standardized testing. 

Murderball. Dir. Henry A. Rubin and Dana A. Shapiro. Paramount Pictures, 2005. DVD.

Unlike many of the other choices in this text set, the sympathy lies in a relatively unchartered area: physical disabilities. In Henry Rubin’s documentary film Murderball, a cohort of paraplegics Olympians are followed through their quest to win… in full-contact wheelchair rugby. The film delves into the biases that our culture has pertaining to physical disabilities, importance of the Paraplegic Games (including rationale behind why the games are played after the Olympics and rarely broadcasted on nationally televised stations), and how the players seek acceptance from a misinformed and misguided society.

Not all of the Olympians are born with a physical disability. The determination and resilience to never quit or say anything is impossible is a theme that has practical usage in a classroom. These themes are self-empowering and uplifting. I also feel the film could lead to personal discussions on how everyone is disabled in some manner and that the disability does not necessary have to be visible. Connections to other students could create a stronger learning community.

As the movie progresses, their disabilities become less and less taboo. The difference between the Olympians and viewers becomes irrelevant. The Olympians go through a similar daily grind and process. My target adolescent reader/viewer will hopefully critically analyze our societal norms and acceptances, posing questions such as: why are physically disabled citizens seen in a different light then myself? Is that justified? Where did it originate? Why has the norm remained in our evolutionary cycle? I want my students to be critically aware and have a social application aspect to these texts. This film embodies how social application can be accomplished.

Poetry:

Underwood, Melissa. "Confidence." Poems Junction. Web. 22 Apr. 2012. <http://www.poemsjunction.com/confidence/>.

I wanted to include a text that was different from the rest of the set, in the sense that the sports were used in an uplifting and inspirational context. The poem recognizes that society may provide strenuous and complicated environments, but one cannot quit. Failure may be a part of life, but quitting should not be synonymous with failure. Sports are simply used as a metaphor to distinguish your tolerance to the atrocities in the surrounding environments.

If I were to incorporate this poem in my curriculum, it would either begin or end the unit. The poem can help my target audience see how poetry can be left to multiple meanings, like life. Each set of eyes brings a different perception and bias. Similar to each sport suites a different person needs to cope with the surrounding environment… but each player must never quit given the circumstances.