I am comfortably seated at the Stuart Sports Complex in Aurora, IL, waiting for my son's U14 boys team for the Kickers Soccer Club to be absolutely trounced by Oak Forest. Our boys know they are not the better team. They are going to focus on playing a possession game, cutting Oak Forest's scoring chances of scoring, and keeping the ball on heir side of the pitch for a greater amount of time than the last time they played them. For this match, they've realigned (changed) their expectations as a team to focus more on the personal goals of developing as individual players rather than what the final score will be. Sometimes you have to create your own success.
I would like to share an article about the role reading literary fiction plays in developing not only the young person's mind, but the capacity for empathy and compassion. If you click on the word "article" at the beginning of this paragraph, it will take you to the article.
When a 6th grader reads a work of fiction like The Lightning Thief, whether he or she admits it, or can even put into words what is happening, he or she is observing Percy Jackson's responses to the challenges he faces, his thoughts, his feelings... and, the scholar is making judgements based on his or her own experience (both from in life and from what has been read before), thoughts, and feelings. It's the discussions, the written responses, and the THINKING about their reading that facilitates the human growth this article talks about.
We, as influential adults in these young people's lives, have the most important job of developing leaders, in their household, in their chosen profession, on their sports teams, amongst their friends, and in their own lives. In engaging them in conversation about what they read; in encouraging, then demanding that they assert their own thoughts and experience into their side of the conversation; by assuring them that their thoughts, feelings, experiences are VALUABLE, we are helping them believe themselves to be leaders they are.
Again, Happy Sunday!
Mr. Ridges
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