Shooting Hoops
At work, I have the privilege of Being a personal cheerleader for students.
I congratulate students when they meet a goal they have been working hard on—like perfect attendance or achieving ‘A’ honor roll for a quarter. I also have the opportunity to get to know them as more than just a student—learning about their home life, favorite foods, and what makes them tick. My students are amazing.
When faced with adversity I often am like a coach, telling students to never give up! More than half of the time I wonder if they are even listening, as they roll their eyes giving me an ever so sly side-eye that suggests, “oh boy, here she goes again.” If I was a 7th-grade boy, I am not even sure I would listen to me.
Life in middle school was hard, so I can’t imagine what life as a current middle school student amid a pandemic might feel like. Several of the students I work with outwardly choose not to follow directions or do their work because they want to appear cool. But on the inside, there is a beautiful part of them that wants to try hard but is too afraid to fail, so they choose not to try at all. I have found that these boys are often the ones with the biggest hearts. The ones where I can look into their eyes and see the incredible potential that lies dormant—potential that is invisible to them when they check themselves out in the bathroom mirror but is bursting inside, waiting to be discovered.
Never give up.
After my morning pep talk with some of these students, I go on about my day, sometimes internally questioning what I am even doing—if I am really making a difference. I wonder if these students would rather just go on with their day without me pestering them about how I know that their C in math class could be a B if they just put in an ounce of effort. At times this big world, which has felt even bigger and harder to understand as years go on with the pandemic, feels like I am the tiniest fish living in this massive sea, unable to fully grasp my surroundings and the changes that are happening. I wonder if that’s what my students feel like too, their hearts and minds still developing the language and gaining the experience needed to fully grasp their lived environment.
Like them I wonder, why try when I might fail? When my exhaustive efforts might not actually be making a difference?
Not in the mood to sit at my desk and stew over such grander thoughts, and feeling like I wanted to drop all to-do list items and be a kid, I joined some of my 7th-grade students on the blacktop for recess. They were shooting hoops in an orderly fashion. If you make it, you take it. Those are the rules.
Balls flew everywhere as eight boys waited for a missed ball to rebound. If they were lucky to catch one, they dribbled it out to the three-point line and took their shot. As I watched from afar, a student called me over, “Hey, Ms. Davis! Come take a shot.” (Yes, I still go by Ms. Davis at school, a topic for another time). I walked over feeling excited by the fact that they wanted me to come to play. Maybe I had in fact made some sort of impact to be considered cool enough to hang out during recess time.
As I approached the makeshift half-court, the student who invited me over threw the ball. I caught it (thankfully), as he said, “Okay, Ms. Davis. Show us what you got.”
Here, I thought, was my moment to gain some sort of acceptability among the students. If I hadn’t been cool in their eyes before, I was about to make it happen. I imagined myself standing at the three-point line, the ball raised in front of my face with my fingers spread wide (you know, just how the pros do), and with a flick of the wrist, the ball would magically spin in the air and land right in the net—buckets. It was going to be epic, and then maybe all the students moving forward would listen to me when I tried to give them advice.
With the student still staring, waiting for me to shoot, I panicked. I held the ball in front of my face, hands on either side of the ball, and jumped toward the basket lobbing the ball in no direction close to the backboard. Yikes.
Somewhat embarrassed at how massively my first attempt failed and wondering if I should leave shooting hoops for the 7th graders, I began to turn around and leave. The student, who had run to collect my horrible air ball yelled across the bouncing ball commotion, “Hey, Ms. Davis. Catch!” This time it was a bounce pass. I turned abruptly at the sound of my name and caught it. Unsure if I really wanted to give it another try, I gave the ball a few dribbles.
“Let me see you take this shot. You are the one that has the skills,” I said as I passed it back to him.
“No, you got this. I just know it!”, he said and passed the ball back.
So, I tried again. And again. And again. And again. Each time I missed, and each time he ran after the ball and bounced it back to me. “Come on, Ms. Davis, you can do it!”, another student cheered. With more people watching I felt even more embarrassed by my misses, blaming it on my poor choice of uniform—booties, tights, and a sweater dress. “Okay, I’m tapping out,” I said after the tenth miss. I couldn’t even seem to make a basic lay-up.
“No, Ms. Davis. You are not allowed to leave until you make a basket,” the student said. “Well,” I told him, “are you ready to be here all day?”
He looked at me, passed the ball, and said, “you must never give up.”
I couldn’t help but smile.
I wondered if my students had been listening all along. Whether or not his encouragement stemmed from my pep talks. But he was right. If I was going to tell my students to never give up—to face failure—I had to do the same thing. I stared at the basket, at the red square on the backboard, and threw the ball. As it bounced off the backboard and then the rim, I held my breath. The ball slipped through the hoop and all eight students, who were now invested in my basketball game, cheered.
Sometimes when we don’t think anyone is listening or watching, they are. Sometimes when we don’t feel like we’re making a difference, we are. And sometimes, a 7th-grade student has all the reminders you need.
