Catch What I'm Sayin'?

Imagine an infield of eleven T-ballers. On any given hit you might have two sitting down, three fighting with grass, seven picking their noses. And there’s always the one darling whose hair ribbons match her hat, glove, and socks putting on lip gloss as the ball trickles to her feet. She sidesteps. And by the time anyone picks up the ball, the runner stands smugly on second base. Whereas, when the next batter laces one to the outfield, half the infielders (including the catcher) give chase and wrestle over who gets to throw the ball back to the coach.

Trying to teach junior high can be quite a similar experience. You toss out a question and nobody fields it. The “popular” crowd sidesteps anything hit directly their way and they try to spin you off onto a tangent. Some still sit and pick their noses. After watching a couple of grounders bounce off their gloves for a while, you become discouraged. You might yell (a little), give encouragement (you’ll get it next time), or maybe even complain to the umpires down in the office. But most of the time these things in and of themselves won’t do you any good.

Even if you are blessed with that one natural athlete who can play all positions, knows all the rules, and hits homeruns in each at bat, that’s just one; and she will make it with or without you. Your job as a teacher, as a coach, is not to hand out “attaboys” to the top stars, although they do need that when they get stuck in a slump. As a coach, a teacher, you need to use your talents, your abilities, your managerial skills to help the rest of the team.

I recently reread Roger Rosenblatt’s “A Game of Catch,” and was inspired by his description of the poetry and beauty found in the simple art of a game of catch: “They do not call it a game of throw, though throwing is half the equation. The name of the game puts the burden on the one who receives, but there is really no game to it. Nobody wins or loses. You drop the ball; you pick it up. Once you've got the basics down, it doesn't matter if you bobble a ball or two…A ball travels between two people, each seeking a moment of understanding from the other, across the yard and the years. To play a game of catch is not like pitching to a batter. You do not throw to trick, confuse or evade; you want to be understood.” All kids, all human beings for that matter, want to be understood.

Rosenblatt uses this analogy of playing catch to also talk about successful parenting and families. I figure that teaching is also like a good game of catch. In order for any true learning to occur, the interchange has to be fluid, effortless, full of trust; the environment of the classroom should be one of comfort and ease, one where each student feels safe enough to stretch out and take risks, to try a circle change or a knuckleball after a while. Because, as in throwing and catching a ball, there is always the risk of an idea or concept to be dropped.

The article goes on: “We do what we can as parents, one child at a time. We take what we get in our children, and they take what they get in us, making compromises and adjustments where we are able, making rules and explanations, but for the most part letting things happen, come and go, back and forth. The trick, I think, is to recognize the moments when nothing needs to be said.” These moments of automaticity, though, don’t happen overnight. They start one ground ball at a time.

The beginning of the school year needs to be a warm-up period: soft grounders, short toss, calisthenics. New procedures, hormones, and even good ol’ fashioned fear might cause some to doubt themselves and not get down on a ball. They might lose a pop fly in the lights, or the sun, or the perfume of that hot brunette sitting in the next row, but eventually the plays become routine. Soon, nothing needs to be said. The game of catch becomes automatic, smooth, and graceful. Slowly, each team member, from the next Albert Pujols to the kid who can’t fill out the line-up card, feels free to dive after that chopper up the middle without fear of getting dirty, without worrying about embarrassment. The key is building confidence and trust one kid at a time. We take these kids, one at a time, and coach them through the skills they need to develop whether it’s how to fix an elbow hitch in a left-handed stance of a switch-hitter or how to hold the bat. Some are super readers while others are still decoding. But it’s not a competition to see who scores the highest on the spelling test or who can name all fifty states and their capitals in reverse alphabetical order. It’s a team effort to bring each other along no matter where each one started individually.

Robert Frost once said, “Poets are like baseball pitchers. Both have their moments. The intervals are the tough things.” And students are the same way. Some mornings the ball will still dribble between their legs, their minds on snowcones, or bubblegum, or hot dogs slathered in onions and mustard, or hair-dos, or homework, and nothing seems productive. Other days, they’re just on, snagging tricky one-hoppers and firing them back with so much velocity Nolan Ryan watches in awe. However, all that Major League success depends on the basics of a game of throwing and catching—ideas and routines—comfort and confidence. Where each student ends up, though, undoubtedly depends on the amount of effort the he is willing to put forth. Some have Major League talent but will squander it and never make it past rookie ball. Others will work harder, come to practice early, take a few more swings in the cage, field a few more line drives, and will find success. When one of the players doesn’t put in the effort or hold up his end of the bargain, it doesn’t work; the ball is dropped, the team is let down. But when both thrower and catcher discover a flow, watch out! Learning happens.