Sports, Young Adult Literature, and Sociopolitical Issues

Sports, Young Adult Literature, and Sociopolitical Issues by Alan Brown, Luke Rodesiler, and Mark Lewis

I am excited about this new book by Alan, Luke, and Mark. They have worked together on various projects over the years and they don't disappoint. Indeed, they are some of the people I love running into at NCTE. Their new book builds on their understanding and exploration of sports and Young Adult Literature. 

I love offering the space to share what they are doing. Their introduction below is fantastic. I saw that they cover some of my favorite YA sports novels and introduce me to a few that are now on my "To Be Read List."  I hope take a minute to read the post.

Alan Brown is associate professor of English Education and chair of the Department of Education at Wake Forest University. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

Luke Rodesiler is associate professor of secondary education and chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Purdue University Fort Wayne. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

​Mark Lewis is professor of literacy education at James Madison University. He can be reached at [email protected]. 

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Author and journalist Keith O’Brien (2024) recently wrote an article for The Atlantic titled “You’ll Miss Sports Journalism When It’s Gone.” The premise, as the title suggests, may be clear to the average reader but the connection to young adult literature (YAL) and English language arts perhaps not so much. The byline for the article reads: “The ranks of sports reporters are thinning--making it easier for athletes, owners, and leagues to conceal hard truths from the public.” Hard truths often reflect the sociopolitical issues of our time. These truths impact our students on a daily basis because sports impact our students. Like journalists and editors, English language arts teachers are uniquely positioned to support students as they use various types of texts to question the status quo of their shared humanity.

​In his article, O’Brien (2024) describes the rise of the “hot take” culture in sports as well as the decline of objective and impartial sports journalism at local, regional, and national publications across the country. He notes, “This is not just a problem for sports fans; it’s a problem for all of us. You may not care about sports, but sports cares about you. Its fingerprints are everywhere in American life: on entertainment, culture, politics, business.” As teacher-scholars who have been studying the impact of sports culture on young people for years, we (Alan, Luke, and Mark) would add education to that list because schools and communities are often influenced by sports. If our jobs as English teachers and teacher educators are, at least in part, to teach students to ask probing questions about relevant social topics, then sports-related content is worthy of inclusion in the English language arts curriculum.

​Journalists such as retired New York Times sports reporter and award-winning young adult author Robert Lipsyte, whose work and career we have gotten to know well over the years, once wrote, “Reading about sports—for athletes and nonathletes—is not about parsing games or explicating plays but about approaching the messy stuff of life from the urgency of emotional action” (Lipsyte, 2016, p. xvii). What Lipsyte and other reporters often do so well is ask the important questions: Who, what, when, where, how, and, most importantly, why? 

Students can also learn to ask questions about the impact of sports culture on their day-to-day lives, not to mention how their experiences do, and do not, reflect the lived experiences of others. YAL can be an important tool given the genre’s wide range of stories about young athletes relevant to three particular NCTE/IRA standards for the English language arts: (1) reading a wide range of fiction and nonfiction, print and nonprint texts across various cultures; (2) engaging a wide range of literature that examines the human experience; (3) and conducting research that questions and synthesizes different data sources.

With these standards in mind, we set out to follow up on earlier scholarship that connects sports and literacy, including a previously published edited book from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) titled Developing Contemporary Literacies through Sports: A Guide for the English Classroom (Brown & Rodesiler, 2016), with a text focused exclusively on recommended and award-winning YAL.

​Our latest book, Reading the World through Sports and Young Adult Literature: Resources for the English Classroom (Rodesiler et al., 2024), includes stories featuring youth athletes—protagonists who are entangled not only in athletic competition but in the complications of life beyond the arena. In writing this book, we sought to provide teachers with a resource that features rationales for studying YAL, sports culture, and sociopolitical issues in secondary school settings; information about works of contemporary sports-related YAL that can anchor distinct units of study; instructional methods teachers can use to engage students at each stage of reading; and ideas about other sports-related texts—contemporary, canonical, nonfiction, and nonprint—that can be used to supplement instruction, whether through book clubs or film study.

The book opens with a foreword from journalist and Sports Emmy Award-winner Kavitha A. Davidson, and each chapter features a “Voices from the Field'' section, with educators from across the nation sharing thoughts about teaching with sports and YAL to facilitate the study of pressing sociopolitical issues. Each core chapter focuses on an individual work of YAL that can support the exploration of a particular sociopolitical issue. These books include the following:

• A Season of Daring Greatly by Ellen Emerson White (Combating Sexism and Misogyny in Sports Culture)
• All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely (Protesting Systemic Racism in Schools and Society)
• Spinning by Tillie Walden (Challenging Homophobia in Sports and Society)
• The Running Dream by Wendelin Van Draanen (Upending Ableist Perspectives in the Arena and in Life)
• Hit Count by Chris Lynch (Confronting the Dangers of Contact Sports Head On)
• Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston (Interrogating the Intersections of Sports and Sexual Violence)
• The Boxer by Reinhard Kleist (Grappling with Death and Dying through Sports)
• Here to Stay by Sara Farizan (Disrupting Bullying Behaviors in Schools, in Sports, and in Society)
• The New David Espinoza by Fred Aceves (Questioning Messages about Masculinity in Sports and Other Popular Cultures)
• Heroine by Mindy McGinnis (Reckoning with Drug Abuse among Athletes and Everyday People)

​Whether or not you have ever considered teaching literature through sports, or frankly whether or not you even like sports, we believe there is something in this book for every English language arts teacher. Back in September 2014, Brown and Crowe wrote the following in the introduction to their guest edited issue of English Journal (“A Whole New Ballgame: Sports and Culture in the English Classroom”).

Various games and contests, along with their stars, dominate television screens and fill stadiums and arenas around the country. And the culture of sport can be found almost everywhere, including our daily language and our individual classrooms….English teachers, even those who loathe sports, cannot, or at least should not, ignore the widespread presence of sports in today’s society. There is simply too much valuable content for students to contemplate and critique (p. 11, emphasis in original). 

​A decade later, this sentiment still rings true, perhaps more than ever, and is worthy of deliberation by journalists, editors, teachers, and students alike.

References
 
Brown, A., & Crowe, C. (Eds.). (2014). From the guest editors. English Journal, 104(1), 11-12.
Brown, A., & Rodesiler, L. (Eds.). (2016). Developing contemporary literacies through sports: A guide for the English classroom. National Council of Teachers of English.
Lipsyte, R. (2016). Foreword: Sports culture. In A. Brown & L. Rodesiler (Eds.), Developing contemporary literacies through sports: A guide for the English classroom (pp. xv-xvii). National Council of Teachers of English.
National Council of Teachers of English / International Reading Association. (2012). Standards for the English Language Arts. https://ncte.org/resources/standards/ncte-ira-standards-for-the-english-language-arts/
O’Brien, K. (2024, February 6). You’ll miss sports journalism when it’s gone. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/sports-illustrated-journalism-pete-rose/677351/
Rodesiler, L., Lewis, M. A., & Brown, A. (2024). Reading the world through sports and young adult literature: Resources for the English classroom. National Council of Teachers of English.

​Young Adult Literature
 
Aceves, F. (2020). The new David Espinoza. HarperTeen.
Farizan, S. (2018). Here to stay. Algonquin.
Johnston, E. K. (2016). Exit, pursued by a bear. Dutton.
Kleist, R. (2014). The boxer: The true story of holocaust survivor Harry Haft. SelfMadeHero.
Lynch, C. (2015). Hit count. Algonquin.
McGinnis, M. (2019). Heroine. Katherine Tegen/HarperCollins.
Reynolds, J., & Kiely, B. (2015). All American boys. Caitlyn Dlouhy/Atheneum.
Van Draanen, W. (2011). The running dream. Alfred A. Knopf.
Walden, T. (2017). Spinning. First Second.
White, E. E. (2017). A season of daring greatly. Greenwillow.