brackets and basketball

i don't know why i do it, but every year i fill out a college basketball bracket and hope that i can forsee which team will win. i could care less about sports, especially basketball, but these pumped-up, testosterone-filled boys running down the halls passing out grainy copies of a computer print-out gets me excited. suddenly what i couldn't have cared less about five minutes previously, i am deeply intrigued with. what i knew nothing about just moments before, i become an expert on. i can't help but think anyone in this position would be the same. it is one thing they love. they soak in. they know all about. they talk about and research and debate. and there they are with just one single sheet of paper that will act as your pass into their world for just a little bit of time. it doesn't matter to them that i score in the bottom of the pile every year, or that i pick teams based on how much i like their names ( which is why gonzaga has made it to the final two in every bracket i have ever written) it just matters that i am happy about filling out the spidery maze and writing in a team to "go all the way." so that is why today i have kept an automatically refreshed scoreboard on the computer and why i act just as enthralled with jump-balls and overtimes and upsets as they do. because it is part of the human side of me that reaches out to the human side of them, and , in turn, they reach right back to me. and sometimes that is the most important part of being their teacher.