One Book, One School Year

Now that the 2011/2012 school year has begun, we are transitioning from a summer reading program to an extended study of Season of Life.

It seems like we had pretty good participation from our students this year. Their buy-in for next year is largely contingent on our commitment to the book in our classes though.

We can all build lessons around the book, or use it as a platform for discussion. We can also learn from one another. Let's try to add our activities in the comments section so other teachers can access them and maybe employ them in their own classrooms.

Chapter 1

Your reading begins in the locker room before a football game. But, while this book is about a football team, it is more centrally focused on life and how to live it. If you’re looking for confirmation, check out what the boys are yelling about as they prepare to play. It’s not the message you expect, that playing football, or doing anything of value, is about love for the people you are with.

Gilman’s football team is different because the men leading it don’t view themselves as football coaches, but as teachers. They coach football to help boys become men, not to win games.

Chapter 3

What kind of person is Joe Ehrmann at this point in the book? He really seems to be enjoying his life, he’s young, a professional football player, fairly wealthy, he’s got it all. Are those things the most important facets of his personality? Put more simply, what does the author remember about him?

Look at the lessons Marx learns as a ballboy for the Baltimore Colts. Are any of them specifically about sports?

DTD Ask your parents about the most important lessons they have learned. Where did they come by these lessons? Chances are, the most important lessons you learn about how to behave won’t be taught in a classroom. Where do you think you have learned something important outside of school?

Chapter 4

Joe’s life changes forever in chapter 4. After his brother’s death, Joe asks himself, “What is the purpose of life? Where does meaning—real value—come from?” (Marx, 20). This question drives Joe’s founding of the Ronald McDonald house in Baltimore.

He is obviously different from the person you met in chapter three. He isn’t nearly as happy, but is he better?

What can you take from Joe’s response to a personal tragedy? If we all responded to terrible events the way Joe does, by trying to make a difference in the lives of others, would the world be a better place?

Chapter 7

Here we get to the central point of your book. The problems of society, according to Joe, are caused by our collective failure to teach boys how to become men. This is an uncomfortable topic for many of us, and one that seems to be focused on half of the population. However, it is valuable, and it impacts all of us because we aren’t talking about masculinity, we are talking about humanity.

From the book:
"In the NFL, what you have is fifty-three men—black men and white men, men from the inner cities, from the suburbs, from the farmlands of America—and they’re able to come together every year and kind of set aside their own personal goals, wants and ambitions, in order to put the team first. And I think that’s the challenge, really, facing us in this society, is how we learn to come together, across all racial, economic, and geographical divisions, to make this society a much better place.”

You are attending a public high school in America which means you are here with everyone who lives within our attendance area regardless of race, economic situation, background, religion, sexual orientation or belief system. How can we work together to erase the divisions between us?

Joe also tells the story of his upbringing in this chapter. What kind of relationship did he have with his father? What is your reaction when you read his story?

Chapter 8

“The way we measure greatness is the impact you make in other people’s lives” (Marx, 48).

DTD Ask your parents how your family measures greatness. Ask them to think about people who they consider great and why. Is your definition of great person similar to Coach (Biff)Poggi’s?

The Gilman football team has a rule that no member of the team will allow anyone at school to eat lunch alone. Is this a tradition we should seek to implement at Mountain Range? If we were to not allow anyone to feel isolated at school, would we come closer to being the “team” from chapter 7?

Why is it so important to the coaches for every member of the team to play in the first half of every game? Are they more concerned with building a team or with winning games? Are they right?

This chapter brings to mind George Orwell's Such, Such Were the Joys. Do you see any similarities in Orwell's experience at boarding school and the discussion of shame and masculinity in this book?

Chapter 9

Mike’s story is interesting. He suffers a huge consequence, and returns a better person. Why? What allows him to improve?

Gilman loses to DeMantha, but would you rather be on Gilman’s team or DeMantha’s? This season is long over, which group of young men is still benefitting from it?

Chapter 10

False Masculinity is based on the following concepts: athletic ability, sexual conquest and economic success.

What is the flaw with each of these methods for defining a man? What would Joe replace them with and why?

Think carefully about the social world you inhabit. Is Joe Ehrmann at least partially right? If so, what can and should we do about it?

The text is really about societal priorities. Note the messages Joe talks about on page 73, our media promote a great deal of poisonous ideas, one of them being this false masculinity Joe is discussing here.

DTD Read this chapter with your parents, do they agree?

Chapters 11, 12, 13, and 14

The Gilman football season chronicled in the book was interrupted by the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. These chapters ask the readers to consider their response to tragedy. We are offered Napoleon Sykes’ poem and story about his friend, the stories of the victims of September 11th and finally Ryan’s coach.

Maybe the thing that sticks out here is the phone calls from the airplanes and twin towers on September 11. As Joe puts it, “nobody was calling their broker.” They were calling family, the people who matter to them and they were saying, “I love you.”

DTD
Ask your parents how they respond to selfishness when they see it in the world? Are there things about their lives that are worse because of the selfish decisions others make? How should we, and you, respond?

Chapter 15

When I was about your age, I was at McDonald’s with a group of about 7 other high school boys. We were talking about girls and sports and we were using impressively foul language. I got up to refill my drink and saw a family sitting on the other side of the restaurant, and they looked at me with utter disgust. In that moment, I saw myself through someone else’s eyes and I was ashamed. I don’t think I’ll ever forget the way the mother and two little kids looked at me, and I certainly never wanted the way I conducted myself to cause someone to look at me that way again.

How do you think the coach at Poly Prep would feel about himself if he read this chapter?

Have there been times in your life when your actions, which seemed just fine, were shown to you in another light? How did that feel?

Chapter 16

This chapter focuses on purpose, and it reminds me of two poems: The preface to Leaves of Grass

This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

And

The Buried Life

But often, in the world's most crowded streets,
But often, in the din of strife,
There rises an unspeakable desire
After the knowledge of our buried life;
A thirst to spend our fire and restless force
In tracking out our true, original course;

Both poets concern themselves with the true nature of life. Both seem also to think that we need help discovering it. We work and work to achieve material success, but that isn’t what really matters. What matters is how we live our lives and the impact we have on others.

Joe cites “moments in America” as evidence that our culture has serious problems. How are these two issues connected, the troubling statistics and the purpose or cause Joe tries to help people find?

What kind of purpose do you have? What gets you up in the morning? What drives your decisions? If it’s personal achievement, is that enough?


Chapter 17

Homecoming! Look at Biff’s message to his team, “You can’t be the kind of young man I want you to be if you’re treating girls poorly, you’re sneaking drinks, and you’re messing around with drugs…Because when you do those things you are not thinking about anybody else. You’re not thinking about your parents and what they want for you. You’re not thinking about that girl and what her parents want for her…”(Marx, 133).

There’s a lot to that statement. His main point seems to be that selfishness or thoughtlessness are the roots of bad decisions. When you’re putting others first, he thinks, you are more likely to make choices that are beneficial to the world around you. Do you agree with this statement?

DTD What does it mean to be a gentleman? Why is it important to for a young man to act like a gentleman? Ladies, what kind of behavior do you expect from a young man? If girls withdrew their attention from young men who treat them poorly, would their behavior change?

And finally, really think about this: the Gilman football team uses the occasion of Homecoming to celebrate their mothers. Nobody gets anywhere alone. Think about a person who has sacrificed to help you achieve something in your life. Now sit down and write them a letter, don’t text, don’t email. Say thank you, and make it a habit.

Chapter 18

Think about how we define success as a culture. Do you tend to think of success as a function of wealth, or fame, or joy? Most of us have been taught that success has something to do with the amount of money in a bank account, but the book seems to advocate a different, more complicated, understanding of the concept.

Look at the impact the Joe has had on the city of Baltimore. If he dies penniless, and alone (not likely), would his life still be considered a success?

This chapter also contains an interesting discussion of justice. Look at how Joe defines it: relational, economic, and communal and think about your own understanding of the word. Is true justice something you see on a regular basis or is it more rare? What can you do to create justice in the world around you?

Chapter 20-21

No Regrets
The final chapters of the book deal with regret. Looking back over an experience and feeling regret is common and unpleasant, and the coaches want to make sure and underscore that for their players. Are they talking about winning and losing when they bring up regret? Why not?

You will notice that the outcome of an experience is much less significant—over time—than commitment to success and effort. If you go after something and do your absolute best, your memories are likely to be good ones.

Think about your approach to the coming school year. If you live it with so that you have no regrets about it, what kind of year will you have?

DTD
Talk to your parents about “do overs” they would like to have. Ask them about things in their life they would like a second chance at, and ask them about times in their life that they wouldn’t change.