Blog Post 3 - American Footbal

My participants have always been ripe with questions for me and this past Tuesday was no exception. The topic was American Football. I hadn't prepared much for the session as I was up until 6am writing a paper for another class and figured that I'd just show some clips of football and we could talk it through as we went. However this is not exactly what they were looking for. Sen asked if I could explain generally what the rules were and basically how football worked. I froze a little bit, because I wasn't sure where to start - I'm not a football master - in fact there are a lot of intricacies of the game that I don't know if I'll ever know. But then I just pulled out my notebook and started drawing a football field on a blank piece of paper.

After I started drawing, the rules and regulations came flowing out of me. I started from the start of the game with the coin toss and moved from there explaining offense, defense, special teams, rules - players positions. There was suddenly so much about football that I hadn't realized was in the recesses of my brain. When I wasn't clear they asked questions, often thinking about it in context of soccer and how it's similar and different. They were guiding me in the direction of what they wanted to learn. The hour was animated and involved - I had a rush after it.

It was a really great session and I attribute that mostly to that active listening and active response. I'm not sure if it was because were were talking about a game or because we were all focused on this sheet of paper that was continuously being added to, but it had a sort of urgency like we couldn't explain everything fast enough. The peppered questions "well what about this?" or "why does the kicker need to be protected" made me think more about the game and it's structure. I really had a blast.

That being said there were only four of us that day - two of them missing. I wasn't sure whether or not to chalk it up to a busy week, the topic of football itself, or something else completely, but I'm interested to see what happens this coming week especially since I plan to do a get to know you question game like Lauren suggested.

Also, I reserved a study room in the Ugli for this session, and for this one that worked really well. I think I may try it for my  next one as well.