Sulli Baller Code

Thoughts for our Sulli Ballers:

1) Play Present: As motivated athletes we must "learn from the past" through reflection, game tape, and coaches talks. We must "plan for the future" through goal setting, workouts, practice and game plans. But perhaps more importantly than either of those, we must learn to PLAY PRESENT. Playing present means we leave our homework, relationship issues, jobs, teachers, and friends in their places for 60 min and engulf ourselves in the demands and joys of the game we are in. We get to practice and games early, lace up our shoes, and forget about everything else. It also means we let the mistakes and missed shots leave our minds (to be recalled and discussed later) and focus in on the play at hand. To maximize our potential and our enjoyment, we must have a singular, focused, and positive mind set of doing whatever is physically, mentally and emotionally possible to achieve the result we desire. When the game is done, the other parts of our lives will still be there, waiting. We can and should pick them back up, giving them the same focus we gave our game. We balance our lives, academics, relations by giving everything and everyone our best "present" selves, not by shuffling along through each aspect distracted by the others. So when we are in class, at home with family, or with our friends we give them our all… when we are on the court… we choose to excel in the moment by playing present.

2) Listen and Learn: The hallmark of nearly every "great" player, from any sport, is that they were always improving. No one "perfects" sports, so having a growth mindset is critical. We must not see ourselves as born "good" or "bad" at hoops, but rather as team members all at different places on the road to excellence. Our successful improvement is under our control, and we only become better versions of ourselves through the understanding of our strengths and weaknesses and a great deal of FOCUSED hard work and practice. Putting up poor form shots in the gym every lunch only makes us slightly better at shooting with poor form. Pro athletes pay personal and team coaches millions of dollars to help them find those parts of their game they need to focus on, so as new athletes we need to leave the egos at the door. Our school's coaches not only know way more than our athletes, they have a unique perspective from the sidelines, and are unpaid volunteers whose only desire is to see us succeed. Every minute of every practice and every game… we listen to our coaches critique with a smile and the understanding we are all trying to get better.

3) Team Before Self:  Basketball is a team sport. Ergo, your personal success is completely dependent on the success of others and vice versa. You cannot be a success at hoops if you score a bunch of points while your team is losing. A team cannot be a success if its individual members are working independently on their personal goals. TEAMS require that each member adopts a role with responsibilities and works at their best do complete their part. The BEST TEAMS find a way to have each individual member's role maximize their best attributes in pursuit of team goals. These roles are NOT equal, they DO NOT all get the same recognition from fans and parents, they DO NOT even all feel the same to the players. Some players need to score, others rebound, others play defence, and still others to mostly cheer. Roles change throughout a game and even more so through a season depending on the flow of competition, needs of the team and player improvement. Whatever your role is… own it. Do your very best to make the team success your primary goal, no matter which role you find yourself in.

4) Love to Compete:  There are many, many definitions of success in the world. John Wooden is the winningest coach in NCAA Basketball history and as a poet/philosopher he has one of the better ones. "Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self satisfaction, in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming." Athletes who focus on the result of winning become desperate during games, a trait that leads to mistakes, choking, and suffocating self doubt after losses. Those that focus on the process required to win, and the love of competition, find themselves less affected by the big moments or the fear of failure. They understand there is always a loser, and that we miss 100% of the shots we don't take. They are proud and confident in the hard work they have put in as preparation and are excited to test themselves against the best they can find. They focus on having done their very best for their team, win or lose, and they know they can work even harder to improve before the next test. So when we play, we play to win, we give 100% on every play, but we know that our "success" in NOT tied to the win… it is all about our own effort and our love of the chance to compete.

5) Respect the Game:  Its' just a game… it is hugely important to us in the moment, and we have given our all to try to win the game… but it is still a game. We don't put our desire to win a game above our respect for those that have given us the chance to compete. This includes the referees, the coaches, our team mates, and yes, even the opposing players. Thousands of people from school and athletic associations have come before us to make our "game" possible and we disrespect all of them when we talk back to officials, mock our opponents, and when we simply don't give our best. Being on a Sullivan Basketball team is huge privilege and should be treated as such. We are mindful of how lucky we are that others volunteer their time, so whether we scored 50 or 0 points, whether the opponent is much better or much worse than us, whether we got all of the calls or none of them, we are humble and respectful of the game.

6) Enjoy the Moment: Far too soon our season will be over and our team will disband, each player going to their own "place" in our school culture. The win/loss record will fade from memory, the trophies will gather dust and be put in boxes, the team shirts will get dirty and be thrown out. What will remain is the feeling we had when we were together. Some let the fleeting nature of these times create anxiety, a desire for everything to perfect, and in doing so usually fall short of their own expectations or even cause the failures themselves. We choose to take the game winning shot and let the cards fall where they may… and to enjoy the moment. Whatever happens we know we put the work in, that failure is temporary, and that we will never have another chance to appreciate being with each other, right here… right now. Don't forget to smile.

Final Portfolio Assessment "Report Card" Post - Active Learning 2015

There are Four pillars to provide evidence (screen shots + links) for, each worth 25%.

For report card posts in grades 8/9 we are legally required to provide a letter grade.

In 10-12 we need an actual percentage to go along with the more meaningful formative writing, so after discussing your semester you will need to put a NUMBER evaluation on it.

As a way to help you organize your thoughts, the following breakdown for the "four pillars" and thematic questions can be used, but you may move beyond these in your explanation.

1) Participation- this category includes all of the factors around your ability to participate and the quality of your participation of in-class activities. Some things to consider would include: attendance and punctuality, wearing gym strip (actual change of clothing from what you wear the rest of the day),  physical presence/activity level during games, intensity of participation, "skill level" in various games, and the motivation behind your selection of activities on choice days. Missing “sometimes” or having “no strip” more than once or twice may result in a failing mark here. Use ALL of the above categories in your evaluation. If you try hard "sometimes", and forgot your strip a "couple of times", and needed encouragement from your teacher to work harder "once or twice" you are not an A student… in fact you are not even a B student in this category. Think carefully about each category.

2) Social Responsibility and Contribution to the Class- this category includes all of the factors that led to your improving skills around working with peers to make everyone's experience more successful. Some things to consider would include: examples of leadership (organizing others, encouraging peers), examples of initiative (helping with equipment, helping with other classes WITHOUT being asked to), positive energy and social dynamic during activities, honesty during competition and on fitness scores, and connections with the community/volunteering. Needing reminders from a teacher to do the above items negates their impact. If you need to talked to, you didn’t do well.

3) Healthy Living - this category includes all aspects of your past, current, and future data and goals on your health and fitness. Some of the things to consider would include: your actual fitness scores compared to others and what they teach you, noteworthy changes in your fitness, some of the barriers/limitations you face in participating, dietary choices and extra curricular activity choices and their impact on overall health, injury prevention, management, and rehabilitation, and future plans/goals for overall health choices. This is the connecting piece between class and life… if you have no evidence of choices/activities outside of class you should be failing this section. One major focus should be evidence of choices that specifically relate to the body goal you set. If you have never worked at your goal outside of class you should not be passing this section.

4) Digital Portfolio and Reflective skills: this category includes all aspects of your blog posts. Some of the things to consider would include: the total collection of digital evidence and number of posts, the quality of the selection of evidence as a demonstration of learning, the quality of the summaries/explanation of the evidence (with reflection of effort, new learning cited, research included, and future goals/plans set), the usefulness of comments on peers blog entries as a part of socially constructed learning and assessment, and your ability to synthesize your entries into a summative final post which provides evidence for your learning. Neufeld’s classes should have: videos of weight room workouts from YouTube or the Internet, videos or other evidence of themselves in the weight room doing those same workouts, images and video of fitness and games, reflections about diet with evidence of meals, evidence of exercise outside of school, a reflective post about the quality of your blog as compared to others, multiple posts about your fitness scores on testing days (beep, vertical), a mid term post, a final post, at least one post with evidence of social responsibility choices you make in class, plus others.

We have worked very hard to create opportunities for you to learn about being intrinsically motivated, to learn about and find value in personalizing your experience to best suite your own physical needs, and we have devalued the external motivators like grades as a reason for being your best. However, along with our legal obligations, we would like to have you understand the spirit of what grades are supposed to reflect, and rather than having your "stories" be excuses for unfair teacher assessed grades, have them be your evidence for co-constructed grading. To do this you need to be honest about the four pillars of learning and how well you approached each of them.

While they are not set at 25% each, if you have minimal evidence for one or more of the pillars this should signal to you that you were NOT successful in that area, which would then be reflected in you self assessed final grade. 

Neufeld classes should have at minimum (3-5 fitness testing days stats and reflections, 2 personal goal setting posts with research links to appropriate workouts, 3 or more goal of the day workouts, 5 fitness day activity reviews and reflections, 3 or more sport day activities and leadership/participation review, a midterm post, a diet post, an extra curricular activity post, and this FINAL post)

Your final post should have evidence The goal here is for you to be able to critically and honestly see yourself within the context of the pillars and the class. Nobody is perfect and nobody is without hope... finding yourself in the middle will be more rewarding than anything I as a teacher can ever say about you. Good luck!!

Final Portfolio Assessment "Report Card" Post

As we have moved further and further away from teacher centred, sport/skill based marking in our Active Learning program we have asked you as students to learn to collect and reflect on the evidence of your own experience, effort and learning. This final post should pull from the best of your evidence, highlight your growth and learning, and set out a plan for the future. For report card posts in grades 8/9 we are legally required to provide a letter grade, and in 10-12 we need an actual percentage to go along with the more meaningful formative writing, so after discussing your semester you will need to put a summative evaluation on it.

As a way to help you organize your thoughts, the following breakdown for the "four pillars" and thematic questions can be used, but you may move beyond these in your explanation.

1) Participation- this category includes all of the factors around your ability to participate and the quality of your participation of in-class activities. Some things to consider would include: attendance and punctuality, wearing gym strip (actual change of clothing from what you wear the rest of the day),  physical presence/activity level during games, intensity of participation, skill level in various games, and the motivation behind your selection of activities on choice days.

2) Social Responsibility and Contribution to the Class- this category includes all of the factors that led to your improving skills around working with peers to make everyone's experience more successful. Some things to consider would include: examples of leadership (organizing others, encouraging peers), examples of initiative (helping with equipment, helping with other classes WITHOUT being asked to), positive energy and social dynamic during activities, honesty during competition and on fitness scores, and connections with the community/volunteering.

3) Healthy Living - this category includes all aspects of your past, current, and future data and goals on your health and fitness. Some of the things to consider would include: your actual fitness scores and what they teach you, note worthy changes in your fitness, some of the barriers/limitations you face in participating, dietary choices and extra curricular activity choices and their impact on overall health, injury prevention, management, and rehabilitation, and future plans/goals for overall health choices.

4) Digital Portfolio and Reflective skills: this category includes all aspects of your blog posts. Some of the things to consider would include: the total collection of digital evidence and number of posts, the quality of the selection of evidence as a demonstration of learning, the quality of the summaries/explanation of the evidence (with reflection of effort, new learning cited, research included, and future goals/plans set), the usefulness of comments on peers blog entries as a part of socially constructed learning and assessment, and your ability to synthesize your entries into a summative final post which provides evidence for your learning.

We have worked very hard to create opportunities for you to learn about being intrinsically motivated, to learn about and find value in personalizing your experience to best suite your own physical needs, and we have devalued the external motivators like grades as a reason for being your best. However, along with our legal obligations, we would like to have you understand the spirit of what grades are supposed to reflect, and rather than having your "stories" be excuses for unfair teacher assessed grades, have them be your evidence for co-constructed grading. To do this you need to be honest about the four pillars of learning and how well you approached each of them. While they are not set at 25% each, if you have minimal evidence for one or more of the pillars this should signal to you that you were NOT successful in that area, which would then be reflected in you self assessed final grade. The goal here is for you to be able to critically and honestly see yourself within the context of the pillars and the class. Nobody is perfect and nobody is without hope... finding yourself in the middle will be more rewarding than anything I as a teacher can ever say about you. Good luck!!