It is time for another special Friday Edition of Dr. Bickmore's YA Wednesday. Leave it to Bryan Ripley Crandall to point me to exciting people and ideas. Bryan has contributed before. I asked in to weigh in about immigration and you can find his post here. It was Bryan who introduced me to Kwame Alexander, before everyone new about Kwame. Thanks Bryan. This time he has introduced me to Jayne Penn and I am already a fan. I hope to run into her at a conference.
The Potential of Young Adult Sport's Literature in Teaching Empathy at a Jesuit High School by Jayne Penn
| Students exposed to their personal environments, alone, rarely have opportunity to learn about other cultures and lifestyles. This, I contend, prohibits an ability to feel compassion for others. As an African American female educator in a predominantly all-White college preparatory high school for young men, I am aware of the cultural assets I bring and how my lived experiences and professional expertise may be perceived differently by those I teach. Teaching multiple perspectives has been a professional goal of mine, however, especially when helping students to recognize the environmental bubbles we live in. Students, as critical readers, should question the world around them and explore multiple perspectives. Teaching empathy, I have found, furthers my ability to reach these goals. |  |
Roxas (2008) writes that an increase of diversity in student populations and a “lack of diversity in teachers and teacher educators is contributing to an ever-increasing divide between what students need in schools and what schools can currently provide” (2). Having experienced what it feels like to be the only Black student or Black teacher in multiple institutions it is clear to me that I am likely a representation of a demographic that many of my students rarely encounter. My pedagogy and advocacy for literacy has shifted drastically as a result, including how I am currently exploring young adult literature to pair with more traditional texts encouraged and expected by my school’s curriculum.
My moral identity results from societal influences and, as a result, I incorporate ideas of institutional and cultural socialization in my preparation and teaching processes. These ideas include the vision I carry forth for teaching empathy. Harro (2000) writes, “our socialization sources are rapidly multiplied based on how many institutions with which we have contact” (p. 18). Such socialization has been true for me, too, where the beliefs I hold have been influenced from traditional Baptist Christian practices to liberal compasses that provided throughout my education. Transitioning in the role of a teacher in different states, both educationally and professionally, has helped me to mold my moral compass in different ways, which is something I express with my students. Exploring empathy encourages my students to grow as individuals for themselves. Banks and Banks (2009) also help me to realize that similar to how I was influenced by my environments, so it will be for students. In their words, “schools are also cultural sites and teachers are themselves cultural beings” (p. 37). As a result, I am aware of the effect I have on my students’ cultural assimilations, and I try my best to be a resource for them. This includes the literature I introduce them to and the multicultural perspectives I want them to appreciate, not only in their high school experience but throughout their lives.
My moral identity results from societal influences and, as a result, I incorporate ideas of institutional and cultural socialization in my preparation and teaching processes. These ideas include the vision I carry forth for teaching empathy. Harro (2000) writes, “our socialization sources are rapidly multiplied based on how many institutions with which we have contact” (p. 18). Such socialization has been true for me, too, where the beliefs I hold have been influenced from traditional Baptist Christian practices to liberal compasses that provided throughout my education. Transitioning in the role of a teacher in different states, both educationally and professionally, has helped me to mold my moral compass in different ways, which is something I express with my students. Exploring empathy encourages my students to grow as individuals for themselves. Banks and Banks (2009) also help me to realize that similar to how I was influenced by my environments, so it will be for students. In their words, “schools are also cultural sites and teachers are themselves cultural beings” (p. 37). As a result, I am aware of the effect I have on my students’ cultural assimilations, and I try my best to be a resource for them. This includes the literature I introduce them to and the multicultural perspectives I want them to appreciate, not only in their high school experience but throughout their lives.
My School (Fairfield College Preparatory School).
An overarching mission for my school is to help young men to develop holistically. In order to do so, I’ve had to be creative in my methods, especially because my cultural background and gender differs from the vast majority of youth who attend the school. In a high school where 98% of the student body are athletes, however, it was not difficult to find a link to connect literacy education with their personal experiences and my own. I, too, am an athlete. Appleman writes (2009):
"For students to be able to understand themselves and each other, they need to be able to contextualize their knowledge in terms larger than themselves; in other words, they need to be able to place their own particular situations and the texts they read into a larger system or set of beliefs (55)."
I speculated that sports stories might be the way to expose my students to cultures and backgrounds different from their own and to make the connection between their worlds and the worlds lived by others. I took a tip from Gay, G. (2002) to build, “Pedagogical bridges that connect prior knowledge with new knowledge, the known with the unknown, and abstractions with lived realities,” and began to develop “rich repertoires of multicultural instructional examples” (p. 113) to promote diverse reading experiences. My high school, with a 20% minority student population, encouraged me to develop more inclusivity in my curriculum and to represent multiple perspectives. Sports stories, I have found, unite the stories of my students. Similar to what Brown wrote in “When Sports and Literacy Collide” (2014) and “Sports Talk, Free Snacks, Good Books: The Paisley Sports Literacy Program” (2018), tapping sports in literacy instruction allows educators to provide intellectual links within knowledge gaps. Many students positively to athletic narratives and stories. An athletic lens, then, especially in relation to teaching empathy, provides a way to diversify the reading experiences of my classroom.
The Athlete Narrative
A primary objective at the Jesuit high school where I teach is to motivate young men to appreciate and enjoy the literary experience. A few years ago, I began to employ theme-based objectives for each of my units-of-instruction and Empathy was chosen as one of the themes. Teaching empathy became a tool to help students to relate to things they did not know or were unfamiliar with. I brought the theme of empathy to my sophomore year curriculum where students also explored the hero in moral conflict. The books chosen for the curriculum during this year also depicted characters dealing with ethical dilemmas.
With the goal to mix-up the curriculum so that it was more diverse, I added August Wilson’s play, Fences. Fences encompasses qualities in a story that I desired: sports, race issues, family issues, personal growth challenges, the journey into manhood, ethics, conflict, etc. It also offered a location to discuss empathy. Fences explores the conflicts within a male protagonist, Troy Maxon, and his effect on family and friends. As a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues who was rejected from being integrating into Major League Baseball, Troy blocks his son’s, Cory, opportunity to play college football. The play serves as a vehicle to dig into Troy’s history and to question the choices he makes throughout the book. Troy’s decisions throughout the script make it hard to like him yet learning his past helps to understand that his flaws make him the individual that he is. As a way to be most effective in reaching goals with my students, I designed a class project to help them better understand empathy.
With the goal to mix-up the curriculum so that it was more diverse, I added August Wilson’s play, Fences. Fences encompasses qualities in a story that I desired: sports, race issues, family issues, personal growth challenges, the journey into manhood, ethics, conflict, etc. It also offered a location to discuss empathy. Fences explores the conflicts within a male protagonist, Troy Maxon, and his effect on family and friends. As a former baseball player in the Negro Leagues who was rejected from being integrating into Major League Baseball, Troy blocks his son’s, Cory, opportunity to play college football. The play serves as a vehicle to dig into Troy’s history and to question the choices he makes throughout the book. Troy’s decisions throughout the script make it hard to like him yet learning his past helps to understand that his flaws make him the individual that he is. As a way to be most effective in reaching goals with my students, I designed a class project to help them better understand empathy.
In chapter one of Multicultural Education, in reference to Nieto and Bode (2008) and Sleeter and Grant (2007), Banks (2009) explains there needs to be a “school reform effort designed to increase educational equity for a range of cultural, ethnic, and economic groups” (7). This includes finding texts that explain background information on stereotyped persons (i.e. athletes and people of color). Therefore, not only was I able to help students connect to the play, I was able to expose them to experiences different from their own, and to provide a narrative that minority students could see themselves in. In order to reach more students, I realized that some of my non-majority students needed to be represented in the texts used in class.
I named the project The Athlete Narrative, a project that requires students to choose one athlete they respect but know very little about. While reading Fences, they research and write a report on that athlete’s experiences, explain their journey, and look critically at the athletic careers, including the many communities that help make them the individuals they are. Jesuit schools like mine encourage students to be men and women for others, and I wanted my students to see themselves as individuals who are also influenced by larger communities: families, neighborhoods, regions, friends, histories, etc. I wanted them to see that characters in the stories we read are also impacted by the societies that make them who they are.
I named the project The Athlete Narrative, a project that requires students to choose one athlete they respect but know very little about. While reading Fences, they research and write a report on that athlete’s experiences, explain their journey, and look critically at the athletic careers, including the many communities that help make them the individuals they are. Jesuit schools like mine encourage students to be men and women for others, and I wanted my students to see themselves as individuals who are also influenced by larger communities: families, neighborhoods, regions, friends, histories, etc. I wanted them to see that characters in the stories we read are also impacted by the societies that make them who they are.
The Athlete Narrative helps students to understand that athletes are human beings, too, and not just idol figures. Every person has a story and that story shapes who they are. Hoops4Hope, a global non-profit that encourages life-skills for student athletes, calls this Ubuntu – a S. African philosophy of togetherness. That is, a person is a person because of other people. The same is true for athletes, and I wanted my students to see that like characters in the books we read, we are influenced by the communities we belong to. An athlete is an athlete because of the fellowship of athletes. The same is true for readers. The Athlete Narrative is the springboard for reading and analyzing Fences and it builds context for how students view the challenges the main characters present. Further, because Fences is a play written about an African-American family, it provides a location for me to share my own story as a Division I track athlete and the obstacles I faced.
As the young men work through the play, too, I supplement reading materials that expose them to a wider understanding of athleticism, including:
Reading such news stories brings a richer understanding to Wilson’s play, as well provides additional angles to teach empathy. The work aso enables students to avoid preconceptions of people they do not know and provides a scaffold to students’ prior knowledge with new knowledge. Using the theme of empathy has enabled my students to understand experiences different from theirs and, in turn, to see the humanity in people and not just occupations or labels. My intention was not to trivialize ethnic cultures or the struggles they face; rather, I wanted to work through sports stories to challenge “stereotypes and misconceptions” (Banks, 1989) p. 17).
As the young men work through the play, too, I supplement reading materials that expose them to a wider understanding of athleticism, including:
- Darkness Unto Light: Kris Dunn’s path to stardom at Providence
- Undaunted by grim prognosis, college softball star vows to return to field
- Reborn and revived: Marines vet Hank Goff rediscovers joy through football
- New York Liberty star Tina Charles determined to help her community
Reading such news stories brings a richer understanding to Wilson’s play, as well provides additional angles to teach empathy. The work aso enables students to avoid preconceptions of people they do not know and provides a scaffold to students’ prior knowledge with new knowledge. Using the theme of empathy has enabled my students to understand experiences different from theirs and, in turn, to see the humanity in people and not just occupations or labels. My intention was not to trivialize ethnic cultures or the struggles they face; rather, I wanted to work through sports stories to challenge “stereotypes and misconceptions” (Banks, 1989) p. 17).
The Potential for Adding Young Adult Literature
Using empathy as a tool to help students connect with text makes the literary experience more valuable and effective. Students gain more from reading when they can relate to the text, and for this reason I’ve explored bringing young adult literature into the classroom, as well. Students find success when the stories they read relate to the world around them. For these reasons, YA novels have tremendous potential to enhance The Athlete Narrative project and how my classes explore moral conflicts throughout the sophomore year.
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas. In The Hate U Give, the main character, Starr, is a high school basketball player dealing with several tragedies. Starr lives in the “ghetto” part of her city, attends a prep school where she is one of the two Black students in her grade level, and is a key witness to a police-shooting. Thomas’s story tracks Starr’s experiences of coping with the deaths of two of her best friends, one in a drive-by shooting and the other at the hands of a cop. The book provides a great scope into the mind of a teenager, and shines light on relevant issues of modern society. Perhaps there is not a better book to teach empathy to high school students, particularly in a prep school!
The Hate U Give also does a fantastic job portraying Starr’s world as a prep student from the “ghetto” and what it is like to live separate lives: one as Williamson Prep Starr and the other as Garden Heights Starr. As she becomes the central witness of controversial police shooting of an unarmed black teen, she begins to unravel the identities she carries and struggles to keep Garden Heights Starr out of Williamson Prep, especially as the shooting gets nationwide attention. The Hate U Give has tremendous potential for teaching empathy. Currently, the only novel offered to students with a black protagonist in the sophomore curriculum is The Bluest Eye, and that is a challenging text for my students. The Hate U Give would provide a modern, relevant story that would engage more of readers, whether at the beginning of the school year or at the end.
The Hate U Give also does a fantastic job portraying Starr’s world as a prep student from the “ghetto” and what it is like to live separate lives: one as Williamson Prep Starr and the other as Garden Heights Starr. As she becomes the central witness of controversial police shooting of an unarmed black teen, she begins to unravel the identities she carries and struggles to keep Garden Heights Starr out of Williamson Prep, especially as the shooting gets nationwide attention. The Hate U Give has tremendous potential for teaching empathy. Currently, the only novel offered to students with a black protagonist in the sophomore curriculum is The Bluest Eye, and that is a challenging text for my students. The Hate U Give would provide a modern, relevant story that would engage more of readers, whether at the beginning of the school year or at the end.
Dear Martin by Nic Stone. Dear Martin by Nic Stone is another text that would be relatable for my students during The Athletic Narrative and would serve as an alternative to Thomas’s The Hate U Give. The main character, Justyce, would be relatable to many of my Black students, but also a character for opening perspectives for non-Black students, as well. Although Justyce is not an athlete, his best friend Manny is – a player on the basketball team. Justyce struggles with his identity at a prep school in a way that Manny does not. Because Justyce, like Starr, comes from a culture of poverty, he wrestles between the ‘hood’ and the Prep school life. The story relates to athletic experiences, too, and the fact that Justyce is a great student about to attend an Ivy League university – and on the debate team – brings a unique angle for breaking down barriers of identity, stereotypes, and cultural misconceptions. Stone, with the way she wrote Dear Martin, offers a vehicle for discussing diversity that would allow me to bringing forth a theme of empathy even further.
Cop-profiling and the killing of young Black men are relevant to the lives of young people today and on message with the current state of this country (e.g, Milwaukee’s Sterling Brown and experience as a Black male athlete). The book explores a sensitive and complicated topic and can be used to initiate class discussions within a theme of heroes and conflicts. At the same time it would my male readers to look at all sides of a complicated issue through an empathetical lens.
Cop-profiling and the killing of young Black men are relevant to the lives of young people today and on message with the current state of this country (e.g, Milwaukee’s Sterling Brown and experience as a Black male athlete). The book explores a sensitive and complicated topic and can be used to initiate class discussions within a theme of heroes and conflicts. At the same time it would my male readers to look at all sides of a complicated issue through an empathetical lens.
Iron Handcuffs by Chris Crutcher. Chris Crutcher’s book, Chinese Handcuffs, is another text that explores the lives and struggles of teen athletes that could pair well with The Athlete Narrative. Crutcher’s writing, along with his article, “Speaking My Mind: Sports Lit” (2014), introduces enlightening concepts for using sport’s literature to engage reading in students. Chinese Handcuffs is paced as if characters are in a race. Crutcher writes with such intensity that it forces the reader to stay aware and engaged Aside from his storytelling skills, Crutcher includes compelling background stories of his main character and the late brother. He vividly details the actions of the characters while working out and competing, making the athletic story relatable and realistic. Crutcher writes in a way that is designed to maintain the attention of a hyper-active student – it is fast paced, engaging, and believable. Additionally, the point Crutcher makes about treating writing as teamwork or corroboration between readers and writers – where both parties bring their best imaginations to the experience – parallels the life skills I also encourage.
Similarly, in “Teaming Up: Teaching Analysis and Research through Sports Controversies,” Beckelhimer (2014) makes the argument that sports create controversy that, in turn, can initiate arguments, analysis, research, and context. Teachers can and should use sports to help their students learn rhetoric and analyze controversy. Beckelhimer also encourages the idea of expanding resource options for research, similar to how the Athlete Narrative requires my students to research background stories of professional athletes as a way to understand the reasoning behind the human behavior and to see athletes as humans, and not merely entertainers.
Similarly, in “Teaming Up: Teaching Analysis and Research through Sports Controversies,” Beckelhimer (2014) makes the argument that sports create controversy that, in turn, can initiate arguments, analysis, research, and context. Teachers can and should use sports to help their students learn rhetoric and analyze controversy. Beckelhimer also encourages the idea of expanding resource options for research, similar to how the Athlete Narrative requires my students to research background stories of professional athletes as a way to understand the reasoning behind the human behavior and to see athletes as humans, and not merely entertainers.
A Final Thought. Promoting sports narratives and stories, especially when they expose cultural differences with relatable characters, helps students to better interact with and appreciate the texts we teach. One of the struggles when working with adolescent boys is sparking their interests in reading. Using empathy as a tool has helped me to gain student interest in the texts chosen and pairing this theme with athletic narratives has kept the attention of the young men I teach. Implementing sport’s related texts improves reading engagement, and the use of YA literature with athletic characters has tremendous promise.
Jayne Penn is an English teacher at Fairfield College Preparatory School in Fairfield, Connecticut, and recipient of a 2018 Dean’s Award for Student Excellent at the Graduate School of Education and Allied Professions Fairfield University. As a Division I Track Athlete at Georgetown University, she grew interested in sports stories and community activism. Currently, she is looking to the potential of Young Adult Literature, with a focus on sports, to explore empathy with her students.
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