Friday, May 24, 2013

Go Fight Win

All year, I've been pumping my advisory up for Advisory Olympics.

"Look," I told them on the first day of school, "I want us to win Advisory Olympics."

I have to admit I didn't get a lot of response to that. Something along the lines of, "meh."

Then, May rolled around, and Advisory Olympics was imminent.

"I will give you candy if you win Advisory Olympics," I said.

That time I got a little stronger response. Other kids came into my room and said they'd heard I was bribing my advisory to win the Olympics.

"That's right," I told them.

Then, Advisory Olympics for 8th graders morphed into a Kickball Tournament.

"I want to win the Kickball Tournament," I told them.

Some guys nodded dubiously. Another girl said, "Well, that's probably not going to happen."

"Don't give up," I told them. "Believe in yourselves."

"Will you give us candy if we win?"

"Yes," I said definitely.

I showed up at the Olympics Planning Meeting which bought us a first-round bye. The team we were facing in the next round was Ms. G's.

"We're facing Ms. G.," I told them. "I want to win."

"Well, that's probably not going to happen," they said. "G.'s Advisory is really athletic and tall."

"We're scrappy!" I said. They sort of shrugged.

Later Ms. G. told me her team had done a lot of strategizing and drawing diagrams on the board. It seemed like they wanted it a little more than my team, to tell you the truth.

So, what happened?!

We sort of tied. The other team was massively intense and disputed several legitimate calls, in my opinion.

Fine, we said, eventually. We actually didn't want to shout about kickball. We played a consolation round. Then, we lost our consolation round.

So, my year-long goal was dashed today. Luckily, I'm still in a great mood.

3 comments:

mm said...

There is something about winning. I played Apples to Apples with one of the groups in my advisory and WON. When I mentioned again today that I had won, one of the students mentioned that I was "assertive" and that's the only reason I won.

I'm sorry that your team didn't win. It's a feeling we need to foster (at times) in our students.

jdoc said...

I was very competitive whenever possible with my middle schoolers. I tried to support sportsmanship, but mostly I wanted to win things. When there was morning trivia on the news announcements, for example, I answered most of the questions for my advisory. I didn't want my years of schooling to be for nothing, after all.

LH said...

I used to get in trouble when I taught sixers because I used to say stuff at field day like, "You don't have to play if you don't want. I mean, who really cares?" Or I'd say, "I don't really care if we win this essay contest. The chances are so slim, why hope?"

So, I'm a little different. And diversity is good.