AdvanceBlog

Certain times of year resonate with sports fans – March Madness, the Masters, Wimbledon, the World Series, the NFL Playoffs and well, you get the picture.  As an earnest sports fan, very often sports vernacular infiltrates my conversation. Recently, while watching the NBA Playoffs, a sports phrase that is frequently used by my brother Damon comes to mind.  Damon has teenagers who are steadily approaching adulthood.  Of those teens, he verbalizes his paternal responsibilities as putting his children “in a position to make plays.”

What does it means to make plays?  Making plays means that the participant has developed skills, practices in preparation for moments of adversity, and understands when to apply their skills.  Damon and his wife Mary are doing a pretty good job of putting their children in the position to make plays.  During the NBA Playoffs, I have noticed that in the most contested games, the winning coach typically has diagramed a strategy that puts his players in a position to make plays.  Moreover, in the best classrooms, I have learned that the most effective teachers put their students in position to make plays.

Rosa Billingslea is a teacher who puts her students in a position to make plays.  Our kindergarten teachers were one of our most effective grade level units when I was assistant principal.  We had a solid core, and the addition of another teacher had to be more than just any hire – it would be more like indoctrinating someone into a family.

Mrs. Billingslea reflects my most ironic attribute as an administrator.  I began pursuing administration jobs at 26 years old.  After a year of weekly rejections, I finally earned an opportunity.  The irony is that it would appear that a young administrator would have a predisposition to young teachers.  I have hired my share of young teachers; however, my strongest preference, as personified by Mrs. Billingslea, is to hire second-career, mature-adult, novice teachers.  What they lack in classroom experience is superlatively compensated by their abundance of life experience.

Joining a successful team presents its share of challenges; yet, Mrs. Billingslea was able to have an impact through the utilization of her voice or better yet emphasizing the uniqueness of her teaching style.  One of her strategies for engagement and assessment was role-playing.  In Mrs. Billingslea’s class, students didn’t just read a book.  They created artistic interpretations of it.  They conducted skits of the texts that were short in time but long in re-enforcing the concepts of the books they had read.  Mrs. Billingslea taught one lesson in a variety of ways.  In utilizing a multiplicity of strategies, she tapped into the diverse learning styles of her students.  She essentially put her students in positions to make plays.

Our kindergarten team was truly exceptional Ms. Phillips, Miss Van Tol, and Miss Hernandez were the definitive, formidable bedrocks of education at our school.  In addition to their outstanding work, the following year while our first grade teachers were piling the work on young learners, I noticed a few students who sort of approached their work in an out-of-the-box manner.  A couple of students did not ask the typical first grade questions, students with varied perspectives of stories shared by their first grade teachers.  I recognized each of those little learners.  The year before, they were all in Mrs. Billingslea’s class, and now they were entrenched in their positions demonstrating the ability to make plays.