Gaming for Life

Ernest Shakleton’s view of life as a game:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Shackleton

“Some people say it is wrong to regard life as a game; I don’t think so.  Life to me means the greatest of games. The danger lies in treating it like a trivial game, a game to be taken lightly, and a game where rules don’t matter much.  The rules matter a great deal.  The game has to played fairly, or it is no game at all.  And even to win the game is not the chief end. The chief end is to win it honorable and splendidly.  To this chief end several things are necessary.  Loyalty is one.  Discipline is another.  Unselfishness is another.  Courage is another.  Optimism is another.  And Chivalry is another.”

Choose a team:

The first step to a game is choosing a team.  Consider the following players and decide which team to play with:

Left:                                                                            Right:

Born to a family with a history                                   Born to a solid family

Male                                                                            Female

A paperboy                                                                 A paper girl

Religious                                                                     Humanist

Teacher’s Pet                                                               Class Clown

Boyfriend                                                                    Girlfriend

Excess                                                                         Moderation

Highly educated                                                         Went to work

Smoker                                                                       Non-smoker

Jailed                                                                           Free

Married                                                                      Single

Disabled                                                                     Healthy

Rich                                                                             Poor

Poor                                                                             Rich

Employed                                                                    Unemployed

Found a Community                                                   Switched organizations

Abandoned family                                                      Beautiful family

No Choice                                                                   Pro Choice

Foe                                                                              Friend

Friend                                                                          Foe

Husband                                                                      Wife

Sister                                                                           Brother

Teacher                                                                        Student

Student                                                                       Teacher

Mom                                                                            Dad

Son                                                                              Daughter

Dad                                                                             Mom

            Before starting a game it’s important to know the team.  Look at the lists.  Take time to see familiar faces.  Do they look familiar?  The game is about to begin. What team will you choose?   Trick question: both lists make one team for a game.   

            Take a look because we are all  on some team, and who doesn't want to play?  To play a game take time to read.  Time is the measure of how to choose things.  So if you’re reading, you’re committed to decide.  If you don’t have time, you’re deciding whether to go on.  Either way you must decide.  It’s your time.

            You may be looking at the lists and thinking.  Where and who are these team mates?  Or maybe you are thinking about other people.  People you know, maybe family or friends, or maybe someone you have read or heard about.  It’s a tough decision whether to take the time to go on.  But again, we all need to be able to play well together and who doesn't like playing a game every now and again? Time’s up. Did you decide?

            Here is a thought.  We’re on both teams.  We are both teams.  But so are many more team mates.  All people are on both teams.   So to truly play a fair and honorable game maybe decide to play both sides, the left and the right. 

If there’s balance between the two teams, playing ball is a possibility!

Suit-up:

            It’s time to dawn a uniform so that the team can be balanced.  Whether playing by yourself, or playing with others, a team uniform is needed.  The colors brought to the game are the colors shown when playing.  Balanced colors usually lead to  balanced play.  A hard game with lots of unseen hits can get very blue.  But in time true colors come back and the game continues. 

Sometimes it takes awhile to get colors to shine again.  Sometimes deep blues are in the game for a long time, especially when the rainbow of team mate colors are forgotten. 

            It takes practice to show and see true colors.  And it takes practice to play with different team mates with differences.  Like playing basketball, the ball that makes playing fun can’t pass back and forth alone, it needs help.    

            Most team mates and games aren't black or white.  True colors make a well balanced team and make for a fun game.   

Kick off: 

            How does a fun, colorful game start?  It helps to see strengths rather than weaknesses.  This helps keep the ball in play, balanced, and in the air.  During the game, the ball can’t always be in the air, sometimes players must dribble.  Before dribble comes tip off.

            Core values, honesty, fairness, teamwork, and trust help get the game started - but where to play?  A home field is needed, also known as common ground.  This is a place to connect with teammates and play a fun game. 

            Every team needs a goal.  Focusing on strengths and practicing them over and over again makes a team ready for achieving goals.  Without a focus on strengths, the game can get really blue and wasteful of energy.  The team would never reach a goal. 

            To play well in the game, teams focus on strengths, and agree on core values.  A team places value on honest and fair play - it's at their core.  Teammates who balance honesty and fairness trust teammates to keep the ball in play, even if the ball gets lost, teammates take the ball after asking, and teammates run with the ball when asked.  If passing, trust teammates to catch the ball; if receiving, trust teammates to throw the ball.  And for a kick, hold the ball very carefully.  Then a fun game may  begin.

Play Catch:

            The ball is kicked, a ball is caught.  The teammates support the ball.  Because if a ball is lost that means the team is out of balance, the core values are lost, and the game stops.  And if the team is unbalanced, the ball is lost, points and goals are hard to attain. 

How can all the balls stay in play?  Play catch!

            Playing catch starts with two and can multiply at any time.  The point of catch is sharing core values on common ground.  Keep all the balls in the air through honest and fair play and points are attainable.  Attaining points makes for a fun game and achieves goals. 

Keeping the balls in the air keeps the game going strong.  Playing catch is accepting differences and building on strengths.  A left team mate may have strengths.  A right team mate may have strengths.  The game of catch is getting the ball securely to team mates and hopefully attaining goals. 

To play catch, it helps to understand teammates.  So that may mean seeing and accept all uniform colors and team mate differences.  Adjust the point of the ball, so team mates with differences can catch.  Adjust the point, so pinks can catch: adjust the point so reds can catch and so on and so forth .  Adjust the point so all the different team mates succeed on common ground and work towards attaining mutually enjoyable goals. 

            Catch is a two way street.  Playing catch is giving and receiving.  The same rules apply when giving and taking.  Look closely at the colors and differences. They all share common ground, and catch and support each other. 

To catch points, it’s important to keep the ball’s color and different team mates values in mind when giving and receiving a point.  If not, the point could be lost and fall, making the joy of goal attainment challenging. Who dropped the ball?!?

            This question can end a perfectly fun  and enjoyable game of catch.  Since teammates are responsible for keeping the ball in the air, blame only squelches a fun game.  If you threw the ball and felt responsible, picking it up, apologizing, and getting back to the game may help.  If you caught the ball and felt responsible, picking it up, apologizing, and getting back to the game may help. 

Remember the home field of common ground?  How do you get the game back on after a dropped ball or point?  Asking a good question that leads back to common ground may help. 

            Catch can get old after awhile.  One way to keep the ball in the air is to get more players.  When playing catch with a variety of different team mates, there is a beautiful group of throws and catches.  This can make the game of catch, or any game, more interesting and fun! It also expands the field of common ground.

Sometimes it’s a challenge to understand the different points being thrown and caught, when so many team mates have different points of view about where the point is coming from and should be going to.  Understanding is critical when playing with many. 

Another challenge is adding more balls and points to the game.  It takes paying attention when several points are being shared.  Balls and points may be missed or thrown off balance.  Remember:  there is common ground and core values –that’s a key point - pick up the ball, understand, and ask a good question.  That way team mates feel support and not dropped. 

A Football Huddle or A Rugby Scrum to the same goal?

            Points are fun in a game and so are goals.  Teams want goals and often cheer for them.  There’s a need to support and understand strengths to reach a goal.  Is it a football huddle, or a rugby scrum?

            In a football huddle, there’s one in charge with a set play.  To execute a play, teams must push to the goal.  This can hurt and cause injury.  Pads and helmets are needed.

            In a rugby scrum, every player is put into a position of strength.  The team is carefully aligned toward the goal and pushes together.  Sometimes the team gets pushed back but the game flows forward.  If a ball gets dropped, the team must get back to the ball, get back in balance and support each member of the team towards reaching the goal.  The team builds a supportive bridge to the goal without one individual running forward without support. Glory of the goal is shared support in rugby not individual attainment.

Turns are taken but leading, following, and supporting is the goal in rugby.  There isn’t a set time for reaching the goal.  Sometimes a goal can never be reached.  But flowing together as a team based on strengths and keeping the ball in play is the goal. 

            What happens when a goal is reached?  Get together, support each other, and play again! 

Swing Away – Wrestling Alone:

            Sometimes it’s good to play alone - hitting a ball, scoring a point, reaching a goal, and on to the next goal.  

The alone game still shares common ground.  If a ball is in play, the individual is responsible for getting the point.  Can the point be lost?  No, it finds a way home.

Remember to bring the point full circle.  A ball lying around is pointless. Remember the home team.  Sometimes balls and points get lost and fine themselves in the shallow waters or high rough.  The key is that points don’t get lost there. 

Keeping the ball in the air, staying balanced, and remembering core values.  Swinging away and alone can be just as enjoyable as a big game of catch. It can expand common ground too. 

            Sometimes team mates  find themselves alone with team mates no where in sight wondering about how to keep playing?  An alone team mates uniform colors may have gone to a deep blue.  But remember there is common ground. 

Team mates toss a supportive rainbow of colors.  Playing catch and taking them in often brings a warm array of colorful feelings.  Trust your team mates no matter how much they may wrestle with deep blues. Team mates often help bring on a new rainbow of colors, get team mates to a new point, a new goal and play goes on.

Binding:

            Teams need glue to bind together.  A glue that holds together for the duration of any game.  Love is the answer.  Hate hurts.  Love heals.  Look for love in the eyes of your teammates.  It is there and they want you to receive it.  Understand your teammates and catch it.  Then turn left or right and pass it on. 

            Teammates are counting on you, and know you’re counting on them.  Balance your core values with the glue of love and your ball will be in the air until the game is over. 

Equipment:

            You have the tools needed to play a fair game.  The team needs you.  You have strengths.  As a team, we are webbed together on a common ground, with core values, making points, and reaching goals.  All ages are watching and learning.  Balls will be dropped but understanding teammates will support.  

“Men must build bridges”

-          Brennen July 25, 2004

“Yayh!!!”

-          Kevin clapping at seeing a Sebastian Ollie, July 25, 2004

First Draft - July 26, 2004

Picturing School Improvement - The Kaizen Car Concept

Carlisle Pennsylvania is a small city thirty miles west of the state capital of Harrisburg. Mostly known for Dickenson College, the U.S. Army War College, and car shows that attract thousands of automotive enthusiasts from around the northeast, Carlisle is not usually considered an urban hotbed or a transformational city. In 2000, at the age of thirty two, I was hired as an elementary principal by the Carlisle School Board. While organizing my office during a hot summer day before the start of school, I came across an invitation to attend a one room school house reunion.

I had a slight idea that one room school houses where part of the region in the not too distant past. As kids my friends and I often passed an abandon one room school house on our way to a creek that held vast crayfish reservoirs. The school house had no signs of habitation; it was boarded up and abandoned. Across the road was a school built in the early 1960’s to accommodate the prodigious amount of school age children who came of age during the WWII baby boom. The contrast was remarkable. The one room school house was brick, small, and seemed like – well, a home. The glass laden modern school building had a flat roof, two functional rectangular box hallways. It resembled a government office or a small factory. It was a school built almost simultaneously when the elementary school I attended was built.

My wife attended the school across from the one room school house; I attended the similar school about five miles away. Children of the 70’s and 80’s, we missed the baby boom years. In our lifetime, we have seen an interesting phenomenon where the contrasting school styles have morphed. A school built to replace my elementary alma mater, has a stylized arched façade which resembles a house. Behind the façade are two long rectangular hallways, churning out education.

It’s not uncommon to see old one room school houses throughout the central Pennsylvania region converted to homes, businesses, or just left to sit and provide a curious monument to school days gone by. But the idea of a reunion of actual students and teachers who experienced a one room school house was intriguing. Would teachers be there…what would students have to say? I marked the date down and RSVP’ed.

The reunion was held in a small fire hall on the outskirts of Carlisle. A lunch buffet was spread across two tables and included western Pennsylvania staples, macaroni salad and gelatin molds. I was impressed with the turn out. About seventy people filled the hall and included some young children interspersed among a majority of attendees who were over fifty five or sixty. Using a black sharpie, I wrote my name and title on a generic nametag and stuck it on my shirt.

A small wooden stage became the center of attention mid-way through the lunch. An elderly man stood in front of the stage and began the ceremony. He recognized the one room school house pupils who were in attendance. Each pupil stood, stated their name, the school they attended and their current occupation. The majority were either retired or looking forward to retiring soon. After recognizing twenty or so students, the master of ceremony then recognized three teachers in attendance.

All three were women and looked over seventy. The first two stood and thanked everyone for the hospitality, made some general remarks, and then returned to their seats. The third teacher stood and was about to repeat the same progression, when a bit of whimsy seemed to envelope her face. Grinning a bit, she began to tell a story that has always stuck with me. Her story has consistently given me pause over the years when I consider the enormity of our educational system and all the divergent interests that push and pull the policy of our nation’s schools.

Steadying herself by leaning on a metal folding chair, the teacher began recounting a story about how her one room school house caught fire during a cloudy winter afternoon. Her mention of the fire brought chuckles and smiles of familiarity in the audience, but I sat entranced, never considering how emergencies would be handled in a remote school, without the advantage of monthly fire drills and reams of state codes.

She suspected the fire started when a bright ember exiting the chimney and found purchase in a tinder filled crack in the roof. The students noticed bubbling smoke in the rafters. The teacher quickly gathered the children and their coats and exited the school. The younger children stood clear but the older students, between twelve and fourteen years of age, hoisted a ladder, formed a bucket brigade and dosed the fire. The damage left a void about the size of a manhole cover in the roof.

The teacher assured the rapt audience that no student was seriously injured. A few scrapes and bruises from the bucket brigade were the only physical ailments sustained. She continued to tell how the students then worked together to temporarily repair the roof. Neighbors had come quickly to the scene and found the fire out, and the students actively involved in solving the critical problem of how to temporarily patch the roof before night fall. Working together, the younger students gathered pine branches while the older students fashioned a lattice of scrap wood and dried oak branches from the nearby woods. After an hour or so of work, the roof was successfully patched. The superintendent of schools was notified and carpenters from Carlisle were scheduled to make the permanent fix a few days later.   

Before the official repair team arrived, the teacher capitalized on the unique situation and created a memorable lesson. The students drafted a plan and cost estimate for the roof repair. Shifting her weight on the folding chair, the teacher related how students took measurements, drew plans, and tallied material costs for the fix. Younger students worked with older students, doing basic addition or helping with the measurements.

Knowing the carpenters were scheduled to visit, the students worked feverishly so their planning would be complete when they arrived. Two days later, the carpenters arrived and the students proudly shared their drawings and measurements. Lifting her hand from the chair, the teacher smiled and said, “After reviewing the plans, the carpenters gathered the children together and explained how they would use the plans to complete the repair. It was a practical lesson the students didn’t soon forget.”

Hers was a story I would not soon forget either. As an educational administrator whose tenure has spanned the years before and after the 2001 No Child Left Behind legislation, I have sat in many meetings focused on school improvement. Often the meetings were about the latest policy, program, or company that would miraculously improve schools. Sometimes I would drift during the meetings and think about the one room school house reunion, the story of the winter fire, and how a simple school structure provided a rich learning experience for students.

I also frequently considered what could be learned from the story and how it could relate to the much larger world of improving schools; a world that encompasses a wide range of different schools, from rural schools struggling with budgetary constraints to schools in urban areas trying to sort through a myriad of interventions being prophesized as cure all fixes. Oddly enough, an answer came after years of research and experience. An answer that encompassed a concept that Carlisle is widely known for - the concept of a car. 

http://prezi.com/tmeknoeupdpm/august-28th-pd/