Following a Day of Working With Teachers, An Afternoon with @StagsMensBball Team @CWPFairfield @Hoops4HopeUSA #Literacy4Life

I leaned over to Lossine during yesterday afternoon's workshop with the Fairfield University Men's Basketball Team and handed him a note that read, "Sometimes I can't believe how powerful literacy can be."

He leaned over to me and said, "I can't read your note. I don't know how to read cursive."

After conversations with Coach Sydney Johnson and hearing his vision for community outreach with his team and upon reflection of 21+ years working with high school writers, both successful and reluctant, we invited the team to come after our invitational summer institute room for the afternoon and conducted a workshop to help the players link literacy and basketball. Each of the student athletes chose a life skill to explore and began to compose an essay that could, possibly, be shared with the young immigrant and refugee youth population that will participate this summer during Ubuntu Academy. Yesterday, however, they shared stories with one another. The presentation highlighted my cousin's work in South Africa and Zimbabwe with Hoops4Hope and encouraged the team to see their leadership potential with local communities, both on campus and with greater Fairfield County area, especially Bridgeport.

I pointed out that the word MEN is in MENtorship, and they truly need to be men for others through living a life with integrity, self esteem, self aware, focus, sense of humor, responsibility, and a willingness to do outreach in the community. The team also discussed Ubuntu, teamwork, and even activity theory (yes, I can't help but geek-out). Winning a game is parallel to being a literate learner. To reach a desired outcome we must have motivation, the right tools, an awareness of rules, a role in the division of labor, and a place within the community. The individual matters to the entire activity system. I highlighted 30 young adult novels with basketball themes and surveyed the team for what they've read. Only a few hands went up --- one or two books. The point was, "These books exist, but too rarely do they get in the hands of the kids who would passionately read them."

I argue, more of our nation would be a reading culture if schools promoted the texts that kids will actually read. He was a room full of Division I athletes who had no idea that so many books were written by authors with them in mind (chances are, they didn't connect too much to what was assigned by their English teachers in school - heck, many mentioned those texts for the reasons why they hate reading)

We also addressed the importance of them writing their own stories about how they made it to where they are right now before someone writes their story for them. Their narratives - especially as college athletes  - are extremely important to youth communities in the State, across the nation, and around the world.

As I left the team in our CWP classroom, I couldn't help but listen to Coach Johnson as he built off the discussion. He wanted to show them tape and to analyze their play before they headed back to the dorms for the night. Athleticism is a literacy. Literacy is a team sport.

And that's the seed that has been planted.