Near the end of February, eighth-grade students started a new unit in physical education showing another side to sports and games. This new unit touches upon the importance of teamwork and identity and how it works not just in sports but in everyday life.
The whole class watched a TED video called Super Chickens, which was about a test that was conducted where a group of chickens was divided into two groups. One section of chickens had been specially selected as the competitive chickens. The other sections were made up of chickens who didn’t show any signs of strength or competitiveness. In the end, the result was as follows. The competitive chickens had become numbered due to the fact that most of them had killed each other because of their extreme competitiveness and strength. However, the chickens that did not seem to have any special traits had all worked together and succeeded in creating a well-balanced community of chickens. The goal of the experiment was to show that in order to succeed, you don’t always need a group of the most skilled and strongest people. It was also to encourage us to utilize all the different skills of the different students. Before viewing the TED videos, students engaged in a different activity.
For the first lesson, several students were chosen to be team captain of a team. The team captains chose their teammates from the rest of the class, who were sitting on the ground, nervously waiting for their names to be called. One by one, students were getting picked to join teams while the numbers of students left waiting was decreasing and many students began to feel left out. Stephen Fordham said, “We were aware that it was going to be uncomfortable and we had a long discussion on whether it was worth it or not but we thought that it was going to achieve our message.”
After the long process of team picking, the teachers asked questions regarding the feelings of those who were chosen last and those who were picking their team. Many captains admitted that they selected people who were their friends or were good at sports rather than including everyone. Ambrose Vannier, an eighth-grade student, who was present for the lesson said, “I think it was a valuable experience because I think a lot of people ask to pick their own teams all the time. I think it shows after the first lesson that it’s not really good to do that. It just doesn’t make other people feel good about themselves and as we’ve learnt you need to have a mix of people in your team.”
Later on, all eighth grade PE students took a test to identify their major personality trait: steadiness, influence, dominance, or compliance. Then, the PE teachers constructed new teams including about six to nine students based on the test results in hopes to have balanced teams that work well together.
Eighth grader Polina Dashevsky said she thinks teamwork is important because “Working in a team will help you feel better about yourself as well as working with other people and when you don’t know something, you have others to help you.” She said that her teamwork improved in this new unit. “Working with people that are different to me will help us advance as a group. But sometimes, when people are really good at a sport, it makes me feel far behind and causes stress and pressure to succeed. But in my group, everyone is working at a similar level, everyone grows at the same pace, which is a great change.”
However, eighth grader Sofia Salveson thinks that “We haven’t really gone that far in the unit so I haven’t changed that much,” but she feels like she will develop her skills more over the next few lessons. “I feel that it is very important to myself, to figure out who I am because I had no idea that I was influential at all.”
This PE unit not only focuses on playing sports and games, but it shows students that teams made up of people with different personalities will work better than, for instance, a purely dominant team. This is true outside of PE as well, and it is an important concept for people to understand while working within any team.
