Actually, Mehmet Okur did visit Bahçeşehir Koleji last year - I'm a year too late! That picture above was taken in the Bahçeşehir Koleji gym. All the kids in it are too old to be my students, but one of them, the blond one, is my coworker's son. I'm not going to lie: I'm a little bitter about missing this.
I arrived at the game early, so I got to watch the warm-ups. Strangely, the coach wasn't even present. Instead it looked like the stretches and exercises were being run by one of the students, and everyone followed his lead as obediently as if he were the head coach. He called the drills, led the stretches, even helped the others who were struggling. The other team was not run like this at all, very coach-centered, always correcting the students' mistakes in form and execution.
But the most amazing thing was who was leading the warm-ups. It was a kid who can't be left alone for a second in English class; if you so much as make to turn away from him, he starts mouthing off with the others around him. He never brings his materials to class, you can't get him to work unless you're standing over his shoulder the whole time, he's habitually late - generally, he's what we call in the teaching industry a "trouble child" (though I realize I'm exaggerating his charges to emphasize the point I'm making here). He's definitely not the one to whom I'd say, "I'm going out for 10 minutes. Can you teach the class until I get back?" (Just for the record, I've never said that to anyone.) And yet that's exactly what he was doing. And he was good at it.
I'm so glad I got to see this part of his personality.
Unfortunately, he was an awful basketball player.
Actually, it was surprising to me who were the good players and who weren't. We know the common stereotype about the popular jock (like the kid running the warm-ups) who's not very good in class but excels in physical activities. In this game - the player who wowed me the most, scoring about half the 15-player team's points as well as being the only one who ran back to play defense before a fast break - is also one of the best students in the English room. And it's not just because he's good at English; it's because he works his tail off. And it showed on the court.
But this was not a new Turkish basketball player's "profile." The next 3 best players (very far off from the star, but still good) covered the entire spectrum: one hardworking star student, one quiet struggling student, and one rowdy uncontrollable piece of trouble.
In the Turkish education system, physical education is much more important than it is in America, where it seems the teachers need no qualifications whatsoever. Here there is a strong emphasis on militant discipline, and PE is a big part of that, preparing the children for the time when they fulfill their mandatory military service. Thus the PE teachers have special status and exceptions: they lead all the ceremonies, with the exception of the singing of the national anthem which they co-lead with the music teachers, because their main job is to quiet the students; they're allowed to wear normal clothes while the rest of us have to dress in a suit and tie each day; they have equal sway in the şök meetings when the teachers gathered to discuss each student individually (I have 190 students... that was just about the longest week of my life).
Here, PE is much more than loosely-enforced exercise. It's a class, a class where you get graded academically just as you would in science or math, or English.
And, speaking of şök, the art and music teachers also had equal sway (I don't have any of the same students as the chess teacher, so I can't vouch for him). Meanwhile these are the programs getting cut first in American schools.
There's a lot about the Turkish education system I take issue with, but this emphasis on whole learning is something I can really get behind.
I like the new picture at the top of your blog. I have really enjoyed reading your recent entries.
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