Getting in a Player’s Ear: A Response to Joe Ehrmann’s Visit
Tuesday, January 24, 2006Posted at 04:29 PM
by Kevin Vande Streek
Men’s Athletic Director and Men’s Basketball Coach
Calvin College
There are many great things about Joe’s visit and I’d like to share a few of my thoughts, one of which is how grateful I am for the number of conversations I’ve been engaged in since the event. These conversations have taken place with parents and coaches, after church, at Calvin, and in the community. What great topics to be thinking about and discussing! A second thought, which was mentioned on the BLOG, is that Joe did not overtly speak of Christianity, which is correct. I would speculate that he did this intentionally as not to offend anyone, but more so to give people who educate in a public sector where profession of the Christian faith is not allowed a vision and words to speak.
When Joe said, “I don’t whisper Jesus’ name in my players ears” my immediate thought was, “Yes you do. You just aren’t using your voice or lips.” I would certainly say Joe lives out his Christianity as a football coach in his message and methods. Finally, the two points that struck me were to love my players and encourage them to love each other. My methods are quite different than his and I certainly question whether I do this well enough. Joe’s presentation was a great reminder for me to keep working at it. The other was to educate young people about what it means to be a human being. Success by how society defines it is grossly in error. Success is not about money, athletic success and sexual conquest. It is about relationships. The most important relationship for me is with Jesus Christ. I’m very thankful that I am in a place that not only encourages this self development and its teaching and mentoring, but it expects it. Again, I’ll keep working on it.
~Kevin Vande Streek
(0) Comments •Joe Ehrmann, Part II
Monday, January 23, 2006Posted at 04:18 PM
by Julie Walton, Ph.D./Calvin College
Thanks to Bob T of Maryland for your comments re: Joe Ehrmann’s work in Maryland (see more about Joe at: Jeffry Marx’ book on Joe Ehrmann, “Seaon Of Life” ). We are working hard here at Calvin not only to discuss these issues, but to begin sharing the insights we gain from our discussions with the wider community. As for Joe Ehrmann’s visit here, his comments, his book, and his work with high school boys in Maryland, I don’t in any way fault his approach or his motive. Others have also shared with me this week his very godly approach with his student-athletes. That’s one thing that did not really come through very strongly in his message to our audience in the Fine Arts Center (which was PACKED!). He hammered away at the need for love to be the guiding force behind the relationships that cemented players together as teammates, but did not expound on his basis for that love, other than that’s what boys are missing in today’s world.
As for needing many more Joes, and Marv Zuidemas and Kevin Vandestreeks, I can only say, “AMEN!” We have so many wonderful examples of the sacrifice, service, and selfless work of these coaches and the countless lives they have impacted. My deepest desire is for all of us in this vocation to begin taking a vocal stand on the issues of sport and culture that confront us today: sport specialization at younger and younger ages; non-traditional seasons…
Transforming Boys into Men: Coaches, Athletes, Fathers and Love
Monday, January 16, 2006Posted at 03:32 PM
by Julie Walton, Calvin College
Last week, former pro football player Joe Ehrmann visited our campus to speak to coaches, athletes, fathers and sons. Joe’s story is compellingly told in Jeffrey Marx’ book, “Season of Life: A football star, a boy, a journey to manhood.” (for more information, see Season of Life by Jeffrey Marx.
Joe, pastor of a large congregation, also coaches high school football in Maryland. His prevailing philosophy is that our boys no longer have men to teach them what it means to be a man, and that sport is the perfect vehicle for those lessons. Joe wants coaches to step in and step up, to mentor children, boys especially, in how to live relationally in ways that show them that life is not about winning, conquest or self-aggrandizement, but about serving others.
READ MORE... (1) Comments •Physical Activity Engineering
Friday, November 04, 2005Posted at 03:02 PM
by Julie Walton, Ph.D.
One good fallout from the recent spike in gas prices was the multitude of people moved to physically move. Here in our Midwest city, more people availed themselves of heretofore sparsely-populated city transits, and our students began arriving on campus in small squadrons of bikes. It was a surprising oxymoron that right here at our HPERDS department we quickly ran out of available bike racks, with students locking bicycles to any upright, immovable tree, fence, or light pole they could find.
Another fallout was that various area school systems, bludgeoned by the rising costs of bus transportation, contracted busing out to bus companies. Where was the conversation about finding safer ways for children to walk to school? So, our children still ride to and from school. Even in East Grand Rapids, which prides itself for nearly no busing, moms line up in their cars for 2 city blocks either side of the elementary and middle schools to drop off and pick up their children. Of course, it’s no longer a necessity at their high school since most every student from sophomores on up drive their own cars.
It has gotten me to thinking…
READ MORE... (0) Comments •The Dilemma of Disordered Eaters in an Introductory Nutrition Course
Wednesday, November 02, 2005Posted at 02:18 PM
by Julie Walton, Ph.D.
I teach Nutrition in a large Christian liberal arts college. Each day in class, I look out over 60 young faces, and pray that the day’s focus on eating and food will not batter and badger the 4-8 students who are in the midst of, or freshly recovering from an eating disorder. How do we teach with sensitivity to these students? How do we continue, day in and day out our intentional and intense attention on food and nutrition and health in ways that do no harm?
The course begins with an assignment to record and analyze a 3-day diet diary. It is not uncommon for these diaries to come back with average daily caloric intakes of 1100 calories, dangerously low folic acid and calcium levels, fat intakes that students wrongly think virtuous and high intakes of water, ice, Crystal Light, diet sodas, and other non-caloric items. Sadly, I am no longer astounded by such eating patterns. What does stun me is the palpable fear of food in these otherwise wonderful Christian students.
READ MORE... (2) Comments •Integration of Faith and Learning in the HPERDS Disciplines
Tuesday, October 11, 2005Posted at 04:01 PM
by Julie Walton, Ph.D.
Calvin College
There is a catchphrase in Christian Education with which we like to describe the many ways we apply our faith in the classroom. What might this integration of faith and learning look like in some of the HPERDS disciplines? Within the distinctively Reformed Christian tradition to which we at Calvin College adhere, the integration of faith and learning stems from the sovereignty of Christ over all of creation. Thus, even learning is subject to, informed by, and molded from this idea that we are first, and always, God’s creatures in God’s world, and that the world as we see and know it is a far cry from that which God created and called good. Moreover, through the power of Christ’s redeeming work, Christians are themselves called to do God’s work as agents of renewal in the church, the academy, and society.
In HPERDS, we begin to look at the many ways faith integration can, and does take place every day in the context of the place of the HPERDS disciplines in an undergraduate Christian liberal arts setting. It is here that students are called to learn and live the virtues of stewardship and diligence as they discover the joy inherent in human movement and play. In and through HPERDS we can look at the remarkable and complex human form, and marvel that God Himself condescended to take on such appearance. We can ponder the meaning of “created in the image of God” and wonder that we, in our sinfulness, can be called to image a Holy God. We can study the nature of competition, and look for the ways it can and should be a healthy reflection of an abundant life informed by play and best effort. We can reflect on the importance of rest and leisure in the middle of a chaotic culture that rewards restlessness.
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Should Professors Coach Too?
Wednesday, October 05, 2005Posted at 01:09 PM
by Julie Walton, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Exercise Science, HPERDS, Calvin College
At Calvin College, we participate in NCAA Division III athletics, and have historically worked valiantly to stick to a professor-coach model in which the majority of varsity sport coaches are also faculty members with terminal degrees in their fields. Our coaches who are also professors are increasingly struggling with the natural and urgent time-demands associated with coaching. Despite what was once felt to be adequate teaching release-time, our professor-coaches are now stretched to the limit in their attempts to be excellent in the four areas of faculty expectations: teaching (and coaching), scholarship, advising and service. The demands of coaching- including significant recruiting of student-athletes that no other faculty is asked or expected to do - have been consistently ramping up over the past decade to the point of infringement upon every area of the professor-coach’s professional and personal life in ways that are all-consuming. A colleague of mine defines the professor-coach paradigm as omnivorous.
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Physical Education, Recreation, the Environment, and our Quality of Life*
Wednesday, September 28, 2005Posted at 03:37 PM
by Don DeGraaf, Ph.D.
Calvin College
* This paper was presented at the The Guangzhou Institute of Physical Education on January 2, 1996.
As one enters the train station in Guangzhou, China, there is a large sign which says in Chinese and English, Think Globally, Act Locally. In essence this sign is proclaiming the same message that John Muir, an American naturalist, advocated when he stated “when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.” In a sense physical educators have always acknowledged this fact by reaching out to all aspects of the human spirit.
This philosophical base is best exemplified in the typical triangular model used by physical educators which connects the mind, the body and the spirit of individuals to promote a balance in people which results in an improvement of their quality of life. That model can be enlarged to further the impact of physical educators upon the quality of life of society. With this thought in mind, this paper argues that the physical education model should be changed to a diamond shape which includes the mind, the body, the spirit and the environment.
By expanding the vision of physical educators to include the environment in which we all live, physical educators can continue to address the “complete” individual. Such an addition would be especially prophetic today as we struggle with environmental problems on a global scale and we realize the true inter-connectedness of our world. The addition of a fourth component into the physical education model would also re-connect physical educators with the allied professions of health and recreation.
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Welcome to PIVOT!
Tuesday, September 27, 2005Posted at 03:50 PM
Authors contributing to PIVOT are professionals from various health and human movement disciplines- health, physical education, recreation, dance and sport. It is our intention to present you with timely issues related to the joy of human movement, the perplexities of our bodily limitations, and what it means to be created in the image of God. Our interests range across a wide spectrum, from disordered eating, to sport and civic engagement, to the integration of faith and learning in the human movement classroom, to the Christian mandate to be good stewards of all God’s world, including our own bodies. We are interested in issues of healthy and active aging in a culture that worships youth, the co-curricular nature of sport in Christian liberal arts settings, and how the triumvirate mind-body-spirit health model might be better served by the addition of a fourth component- that of an environmental land ethic that ties all of creation together for the sake of community and future.
As Christian college professors, we too struggle with issues of work-leisure-spirit balance in our own lives. How does God’s call to be diligently at work in His kingdom, and to not weary in doing good create inherent tension when we feel the urgency of our own need to be still and know God?
We have titled this weblog PIVOT because we will intentionally address those pressure points around which our lives turn as we ourselves train in godliness- and even as we train and mentor young people in our disciplines- that we may have the mind of Christ and heart and hands that are offered unconditionally to His service.