Off-Court Talk: Education & Learning Styles

Now that school is officially out for summer in New York City, the volunteers at Marcy led a reflection on the academic year this past Saturday. As the previous day marked the first day of summer vacation for our students, we started the water break asking, “How does everyone feel now that the school year has ended?”

“Happy!” the students shouted in unison--no surprise there! Summer’s onset is just about the most exciting time of the year for any child.

Even though our kids were expectedly thrilled to have temporarily escaped the woes of waking up early, being on their best behavior, doing homework etc., they agreed that the most recently completed school year was a good one, and spoke positively about their teachers.

Gary asked, “Who is your favorite teacher, and why do you consider him or her to be the best?” Their responses were varied, but it seemed like Science, Physical Education and English Language Arts teachers received the most votes. The most likeable teachers are those who dedicate the most time and energy helping students get through difficult topics, the kids explained. Conversely, we explored what actions make a good student, either in school or at KCTL, to encourage appreciation for a learning relationships from both perspectives.

As a group exercise, we asked a few kids to pretend to be “teachers,” while the rest listened as “students.” The teachers led a tennis lesson by demonstrating proper technique for groundstrokes.

Afterwards, we asked the teachers how it felt to stand in front of the “class” to educate students about an assigned topic. They said that they felt nervous at first, but soon became relaxed and confident about the experience. Our exercise was a success! The kids understood the effort required to successfully teach a class. We closed out with a discussion about who would like to become a teacher someday before returning to rallying.

Week 8: Rally, Rally, Rally

From Marcy

Since Thursday was the last day of school for our students, we started our discussion by asking the question... How does everyone feel now that the school year was over. Everyone answered, Happy! We asked them to think back to the first day of school and all that happen since that first day, how would they say the school year turn out for them, and most answered that the year was good. For tennis, we had the kids go through the five stations (four tennis drills and one discussion station).
 

From Tompkins

During this week's class, the children did mostly rallying, rotating between four different stations focusing on forehand serving. The focus of the off-court discussion was mainly on peer pressure, and there was a brief introduction of site coordinator, Charisse and her role at Tompkins, to build trust and rapport with the kids.
 

From Sumner

For the second week in a row, Sumner students practiced rallying by playing King of the Court. We also briefly introduced the kids to volleying and played a few Sumner favorites: Pac-Man, Jailbreak, and Frogger. In the group off-court discussion, we talked about peer pressure.

Off-Court Talk: Community

Over the weekend at Marcy, our off-court discussion borrowed the central theme from the day’s earlier ribbon cutting ceremony: community.

The ceremony unveiled our newly restored, beautifully painted blue tennis court—but our celebration didn’t stop there. Together with students, parents and volunteers from all four KCTL sites, along with local leadership figures, we also celebrated something more meaningful than a tennis court--our community. Speakers at the ceremony praised KCTL’s impact on the community, and expressed confidence that the new court will intensify this positive influence.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and 36th District Council Member Robert Cornegy applauded our program’s creation of a new community. KCTL is a fusion of children, parents and adult volunteers in safe and fun learning environments, they said.

KCTL president and founder, Michael McCasland emphasized that the new facility welcomes an entire community. Although it’s located at the Marcy Playground, closest to the Marcy Houses, the renovated space is open to all KCTL students, including those who reside in Tompkins, Sumner and Lafayette Gardens.

Brandon, a 15-year-old KCTL student who has been with the program since it began in 2010, enthusiastically told the audience that KCTL has created a new community for him, a “second family.”

After the ceremony, we talked about community in our off-court discussion to round everything out. Appropriately, some of our neighbors in the community sat alongside us, since we’d invited students and volunteers from Tompkins to join our site for the day.

In our conversation, we explained that communities are best defined by where you live. We pointed out how earlier that day, we had united four communities to join as one. With this understanding, the kids told us about the importance of taking care of your community and its resources. If someone’s damaging community property—say, with graffiti or breaking glass—you should ask them to stop or alert someone who can help.

The students learned that any community is strongest when its members interact in cooperation in pursuit of common good—just like the community we’d come together to celebrate earlier in the day.

Off-Court Talk: Friendship

During our off-court discussions at Marcy last weekend, we talked about Friendship, a topic that perfectly complimented our first class dedicated to rallying.

Our chat about Friendship was actually inspired by the previous class’ talk about Values. Noticing that the students gave little prioritization to friendship in the Values Ranking exercise, we decided to lead an entire discussion about the people we call our friends. We got the kids talking about what makes someone a friend. They identified two important features of friendship: having common interests and being able to trust one another.

We also helped the students to distinguish between their friends and best friends. The kids overturned the idea that a best friend is someone who is simply physically close to you all the time. One student, Brenda, proved this by explaining that her best friend goes to a different school than her. Although they’re not by each other’s side everyday, their frequent communication keeps their friendship afloat.

So, what does this have to do with rallying? Until Saturday, our lessons had kept the game of tennis entirely “one-way”: focused on hitting forehands and backhands over the net or at a target, never returned by a fellow student to initiate back-and-forth play. Our groundstrokes drills—with balls fed directly to students to improve their form—explored tennis only from the standpoint of the individual player, without considering what the game really is: hitting with another person or people, sustaining a rally.

Rallying is easily likened to friendship. Like maintaining an exciting rally, keeping a good friendship requires effort and responsiveness on both sides. A life with strong friendships is definitely more meaningful and than one without them, all alone—just like tennis is much more fun with someone else on the other side of the net, playing against you!

Week 7: Intro to Rallying

At Marcy site: Today was the first time we were able to use our court due to extensive renovations that had the court closed off for the last two weeks... What a great job that was done on the renovation of the court. It looks (and feels) amazing!

Introduction to Rally was the topic for today's lesson. As par for the course, we again had four stations setup. On the main court, we had the students trying to hit 8-10 consecutive shots back and forth. The 2nd station was the Basic Rally station, where we increased the number of consecutive shots to 15-20. (We did take into account the students skill level and adjusted the number of hits accordingly.) The 3rd station was Beat the Pro, where our students played against the coach/mentor of that station, trying to make as many consecutive shots/hits as possible. The 4th Station was our Footwork/Agility station where our students worked on various footwork drills.

This upcoming Saturday, June 21, is the official Ribbon Cutting/Opening of the KCTL, Marcy Playground Tennis Court! The ceremony begins at 12:00 pm. Hope to see you there!

Off Court Talk: Values

On Saturday at Marcy, our off-court talk topic was Values, which we explored in between groundstroke drills and our usual end-of-class game, breakout. This time, we invited the entire site to talk together, rather than in small discussion groups of four to five kids.

After making sure that everyone understood what we meant by values, we explained that these ideals usually originate within one’s family: While we all have our own personal values, they probably overlap with what our families consider most important.

We distributed copies of a worksheet titled “Rank Your Values” to make the conversation less abstract. The sheet contained a list of 21 common values relevant to kids of all ages: Getting Good Grades; Being Artistic or Creative; Helping Others; Being Healthy; Getting a Job I Really Like; Making Money; Being Accepted by My Friends.

We challenged the students to select and share their top 10 personal values from the list. Leading the discussion, Marcy’s site coordinator, Gary, reminded everyone that there were no right or wrong answers—only you can determine what you personally value! He called on several kids to reveal their value rankings to the group. While most of the kids included similar sets of values in their top 10, they all ordered them slightly differently, reinforcing that we all prioritize values uniquely as individuals.

Below, check out a photo of some of the Marcy students reviewing their Values worksheets while cooling off in the shade!

Week 6: Forehands, Backhands & Footwork

At Marcy site, we had two "new" instructors helping out: KCTL Vice-President, Jonathan Williams, was our site leader for the day and Jose, a former KCTL student of the program, returned to volunteer with the kids for the day. Saturday's lesson focused on bringing together the prior 4 weeks lessons--Forehands, Backhands and Footwork/Agility. We placed our student into groups of four and five, and then placed them at our usual drills/skills station setup. The students had the opportunity to work on all the components of the game at each of the stations with two volunteers coaches at each station. After few minutes, we had each group rotate to the next station, where a new skill and drill was introduced.

Our Off Court Discussion was in regards to Family and Personal Values. I must say with such a diverse group of students, I found that most of our students share the same family and personal values in one form or another, such as telling the truth, being healthy, helping others, getting good grades/education, and being safe and secured. What a great team. What great kids.