Thanksgiving in Tuscaloosa is about family and football.Football was undeniably a disaster, since the Alabama football team lost to Auburn for the sixth time running - the longest losing streak in our history. What amazes me is the frenzied reaction to inevitable disappointment after insanely unrealistic expectations. Quite a list of superlatives.
Bama fans started the year with a mild expectation that our new football coach would do something (anything!) to improve the football program. The University pays him an enormous amount of money for which he is expected to bring in even more enormous amounts of money and excellent football players. People were saying then a 7-5 season would be wonderful! After some improvement early on, expectations changed and now this season is being described as one of the worst in the history of the football program. It wasn't great, but we beat Arkansas and Tennessee! (I was there for that one). We also lost to Georgia (ouch), LSU (double ouch) and LA Monroe (words cannot describe that one!)
It made me think of how often we have unrealistic expectations and a desire for immediate graitification of those expectations. We forget that anything worthwhile takes effort, and effort takes time and practice to become automatic.
Any parent knows and any sports coach knows that learning the basic skills of life and the game takes time. It takes modeling from a person who are reasonbaly proficient, and patient instruction until the student gets the idea. Then there has to be ample opportunity for practice before we try out our new skill in public. We forget that when we teach children, they need modeling, and time to practice, and the opportunity to try out their new knowledge and skills in a safe place. There is such a rush to cover whatever the state and the district tells us to cover that we do not have time to allow practice and learning. Even gifted kids need time to practice and apply skills. They don't know everything. People sometimes expect the so-called gifted kids to know everything. They may have the ability to learn more quickly, but they must still learn. If we have unrealistic expectations, we shortchange them.
If you teach high ability kids, don't expect them to know everything. They need instruction. To see a taxonomy of skills you can teach those kids, go to http://www.gifted.uconn.edu/sem/typeiips.html
