It’s that time of year again!! The NBA Playoffs have arrived, and nowhere is this more evident than in Miss Sarah’s 4th grade classroom in Cofradía, Cortes, Honduras.
As a native San Antonian who experienced our first ever championship title back in 1999, I have nothing but fond memories of this annual playoff tradition. Growing up, the months from April – June were nothing but synonymous with celebration and fun. It began in April with 2 weeks of Fiesta, with the whole city coming together to celebrate our hispanic heritage and traditions, and it segway-ed straight into the NBA Playoffs, in which our beloved Spurs of course participated every year… picking up 4 championships along the way.
I have the fondest memories of Saturday and Sunday afternoon Spurs games, with ABC’s playoff music playing in the background, our den windows open to let in the 70-degree Spring breeze, and the smell of some sort of Mexican food (or at least queso) drifting through the house. We would gather around as a family to spend quality time together, screaming all sorts of obscenities at the refs when things didn’t go our way, and jumping up and down in celebration when Tony or Manu would make a clutch shot at the buzzer.
So you can imagine how the past 4 years away from this annual San Antonio tradition hasn’t exactly been easy. And you can imagine how being in Honduras, where the only real sport is soccer, hasn’t exactly made this year easy as well. There’s only so much that a shotty illegal live-stream over the Internet can recreate.
So, what did I do, you ask? Considering I’ve never been the type of person to hold in my personal joys and excitements, I brought it straight to the place where I spend about 80% of my waking hours: my classroom.
That’s right. We have an official playoff bracket in our classroom, created by me on a piece of cartulina.
At first I tried to legitimize the fact that my classroom had a completely tangential basketball bracket adorning its wall … you know, to convince myself that I wasn’t being a bad teacher. We would turn it into several quick math problems, talking about the minimum and maximum amount of games that could be played, introducing the concept of “the best of 7″, and discussing the different combinations of W-L outcomes that there could be.
But then it grew into something more: the kids became so into it that their level of excitement surprised even me. They would start screaming and jumping in the air upon seeing that the Spurs had won. They began looking in La Prensa every morning for the scores from various games, and one of my kids made an active decision to watch a basketball movie (I think it was Space Jam) that was playing on his TV last weekend. He was so excited to come in and tell me about what he’d learned about the game. He talked about it for like 3 days. Cinquains and Haikus about the Spurs also began showing up during Writing Workshop… something that simply delighted me!
It’s not just the excitement my kids are getting from this new sport that’s got me tickled, but it’s the fact that the first thing they do every morning is come in and check the bracket (which I update before school each day) to see if their “teams” won. I began to see them making predictions based off real-time data, a Math skill they won’t get to until next year, and I watched them debate (in English!) about why they thought a particular team would win based on the data so far.
Earlier this week, I started having a quick 2-minute daily math and past-tense verb practice associated with the bracket during morning meeting. We would calculate the difference in scores by subtracting the two scores to see which team won by how many points. Love those real-world word problems!
They began learning new vocabulary and idiomatic phrases as the Spurs continued to – excuse me – completely dominate the Jazz in the first round. They understand all cultural connotations of the phrase “let me see your brooms!”, and they’ve even got the irregular past-tense verb “swept” correctly integrated into their vocabulary.
With the Spurs up 2-0 in the semi-finals against the Clippers, we spent about 2 minutes making predictions on whether or not we should “get our brooms ready” just yet. We voted and recorded the results as fractions. 25/25 of the class said no, that it was too early and that we should wait until we’re up 3-0. Smart children!
While Mister Greg believes I’m secretly teaching my 9 and 10 year olds how to gamble (jokingly suggesting my final exam should involve nothing but a craps table), I like to think our little morning playoff discussions are providing them with a little extra, academic, and cultural fun. As a volunteer here, I have learned a wealth of information about futbol and the enormous influence it has on not just Central America, but the world. Why not share a little something of my world with them? With new vocabulary, new math skills, and real-time data being used the classroom, what could go wrong?
