Home Team (12 page)

Hey Nick,

I think what you did tonight took a lot of guts.
I'm proud of you. The question now is are you ready for a real challenge, to show leadership and help others?

I didn't know what he meant by that. How was I supposed to help anybody? I'm just a kid.

Johnnie and I have been thinking about a project that you and your entire school could team up on to make a huge difference in the world.

You know Johnnie and I were in Africa with the Basketball Without Borders program and I'd
mentioned how those kids there love the game but can't even afford shoes to wear. Well, you know Johnnie. He started thinking and decided to call our youngest brother, Joshua, who works at the Basketball Hall of Fame, for some suggestions.

Joshua just emailed us back with the information about an organization that could help put shoes on the feet of those children over there in South Africa and other places.

I want you to visit their website,
www.soles-4souls.org
, to find out how your team can inspire every student in the school to donate a pair of used shoes to kids like Tulani—that boy I mentioned I'd met in South Africa—who really need them.

I don't usually ask for favors, but I need your help with this and I know you're the type of leader who can make this happen.

JYD

P.S. I hope you enjoyed the game tonight in the owners' suite…and I'm proud of your decision!

There wasn't much question. If Jerome wanted my help, he'd get my help. After all that he'd done for me, I owed him.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The announcements droned on. I wasn't in the mood for them this morning. I just wanted to know if our shoe drive was going to be successful. Today was the day—the day everybody had been asked to bring in a used pair of sports shoes and drop them off at the office before school started. I'd seen some kids with shoes, but we'd been at practice in the gym, so I didn't really know if it would be a whole lot or just a few.

I knew we'd have some shoes because everybody on the team was working on it and we'd all brought in shoes. I was so happy about the team working on this together. Right after the Raptors game I figured some of them—maybe
all
of them—would be mad at me for making them miss the chance to meet the Raptors after the game, but they weren't. They were my teammates, but more importantly they were my friends, and they got behind this project.

I hadn't slept much the night before. I kept going over everything in my head and hoping we'd be able to gather enough pairs of shoes to make Jerome proud of our efforts—and I guess, more importantly, enough shoes to help those kids in Africa.

“And we have one final announcement,” Mr. Waldman said, “concerning our basketball team and its shoe drive.”

That got my attention.

“Starting at nine thirty, after we've had time to prepare, there will be a full school assembly about our Clark Raptors and their efforts… I guess you can call it a Raptors assembly. Classes will be called down, grade by grade, starting with the kindergarten classes. And that ends our announcements.”

I guess I should have been happy, but I was nervous. I looked around the room. I wondered how many of my classmates had brought in shoes.

“Could everybody please take out a book and read silently until we are called down to the gym,” Mrs. Orr said.

Books came out of desks and backpacks around the class. I pulled out my book. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to concentrate enough to read, but I could open a book.

The kindergarten classes and then the grade-one classes were called down to the gym for the assembly.

I looked over at Kia. She was reading. I tried to catch her eye, but either she didn't see me or she was ignoring me. I waved my hand and— “Nicholas, do you have a question?” Mrs. Orr asked.

Great, I'd gotten the wrong person's attention.

“No…there was a fly…I was shooing it away.”

She didn't look convinced.

The grade twos and the grade threes were called down together. The gym was always filled from the front, with us, the big guys, the grade sixes, at the back. I remembered when
we
used to be the little ones and got to sit up front. That was so long ago. Back then there had been no worries, no problems. Oh, to be young again.

Finally the announcement came for us.

“Line up, please,” Mrs. Orr said.

We all lined up at the door.

“You all know my expectations for behavior at the assembly,” Mrs. Orr said.

We did. We knew that we weren't just supposed to be well-behaved but were to be the best-behaved kids in the school. She always told us that as grade sixes we had to be role models for everybody else.

She led us down the hall, single file, no talking, to the gym. The gym was already filled and noisy. Judging from the noise level, we didn't have to worry about being the best-behaved. We settled into our section of the floor as the other two grade-six classes did the same.

Mr. Waldman was standing at the front. He raised his hand to signal he wanted silence, and a wave of hands went up and the volume went down to nothing.

“Good morning,” he said. “That was excellent assembly behavior. Could we please have the basketball team come forward.”

I got up—we all got up—and walked to the front. Half the guys were wearing our new jerseys. I wasn't. Neither was Kia. If we'd known about the assembly, we would all have worn our jerseys. We walked up front, and there on the floor was a gigantic arrangement of shoes. In big, thick letters, three shoes wide—it spelled out
Home Team
! I was stunned!

“We are all so proud of our basketball team,”

Mr. Waldman said. “Let's give them a big round of applause.”

Everybody cheered.

“And while we're proud of what they've accomplished on the court, we're even prouder of what they've done off the court,” Mr. Waldman said.

“Thanks to their leadership and the efforts of children across the school, we have gathered over five hundred pairs of shoes to be donated to Soles for Souls for children in Africa!”

This time the cheering was even louder. I did feel proud—not just of us, but of everybody who contributed.

“And since today is a Raptors day, I would like to introduce a couple of very special guests who are here to receive the shoes,” Mr. Waldman said. “They came here today to say a very special hello. I'd like to introduce a former Raptor, Mr. Jerome Williams, and his brother, Johnnie Williams the Third!”

There was a big cheer as Jerome and Johnnie came through the stage curtain. They gave a big wave to everybody. Then Jerome looked right at me and winked. I knew why they were here—it wasn't just to get the shoes but to make things better for me after what happened at the Raptors game. That was just like Jerome and Johnnie. Maybe the Raptors couldn't come to the school, but one ex-Raptor legend could.

“Hey, Clark Elementary, it's great to be here with you this morning!” Jerome beamed.

“And we're all proud, so proud, of the contributions that you made,” Johnnie added.

“That's for sure. You've let us know that it isn't just the NBA that cares, but the students of Clark care,” Jerome continued.

“You've shown that anybody, young or old, can make a difference,” Johnnie said.

“That you care!” Jerome yelled.

“So when I say ‘Who cares?' you say ‘Clark cares'…Who cares?” Johnnie yelled out.

We all screamed “Clark cares” as loud as we could, and it was loud!

“Who cares?” Johnnie yelled.

“Clark cares!” we screamed back—so loud the whole gym seemed to shake.

“And finally,” Jerome said, “I should introduce some friends of mine who've come to help collect the shoes. Could we please open the curtains!”

The curtain slowly opened to reveal Wayne Dawkins standing on the stage! And beside him was a second Raptor and a third and a fourth and a fifth, and the stage was filled with the entire Raptors team!

I practically fell over!

Jerome and Wayne exchanged a high five, and then Jerome handed him the microphone.

“Good morning, boys and girls of Clark Boulevard Public School!” he called out. “We want to thank our coach for letting us skip practice, and we want to thank you for joining our NBA Cares community team. We really appreciate you letting us drop into your school on such an unscheduled basis. That was very nice of you to be willing to come out of class to meet us.”

There was a tremendous round of applause— and was Wayne looking at me?

“How many of you saw our overtime win a couple of weeks ago?” Wayne asked.

Hands and voices were raised across the gym.

“That was a tremendous victory, and the reason we won was because we played as a team. And after our victory we found out how this
whole
school is a team, a team that helps other people, so we had to come out here to meet the entire team.”

There was more cheering. One by one each Raptor came up to the microphone to say a few words. Jerome and Johnnie had come off the stage and were standing by the side. Slowly I moved over until I was standing right beside them.

“Thanks for arranging this,” I said.

“Wasn't much to arrange. I just let them know what you did, and the whole team insisted on coming out to visit your school.”

“Well, thanks for what you did,” I said.

“I didn't do much.”

I still had one more question I wanted to ask. “When I emailed you to ask about the Raptors coming to the school, you could have arranged it, right?”

He nodded his head. “A couple of them would have come if I asked.”

“But you didn't ask them,” I said.

“You really didn't ask me to ask them,” he said.

“Besides, this wasn't about having a Raptor player come and speak.”

“It wasn't?” I asked.

“No, this was about
you
getting the Raptors to come, about you not just asking for something for your school, but about you and the school giving something back as well. It wasn't about what
I
could do, but what
you
could do, all of you working as a team to reach your goal—
our
goal—to help others.” He paused. “Do you understand?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“And you were the leader. Now you better take a minute to figure out what you're going to say.”

“Say to who?”

“To everybody. Right after the last Raptor speaks, I'm going to go up, take the microphone and introduce you.”

“But what am I going to say?” I gasped.

“Maybe thank the Raptors, maybe thank everybody for helping make this such a success. You'll come up with something.”

Jerome gave me a big smile.

I should have been nervous. I should have been terrified. But I wasn't. I would come up with something, and instead of worrying about it, I was just going to enjoy the moment. We'd done it. The Raptors were here.

I smiled, and my smile was almost as big as Jerome's.

Afterword

I owe a debt of gratitude to Eric Walters, Johnnie and Jerome Williams, Bill Waldman and Orca Book Publishers for their passion and purpose in bringing
Home Team
to fruition. This book is an extraordinary example of an innovative strategy to motivate and inspire our boys (let's not forget the girls that were also involved) to embrace literacy for life.

It all started in January and lasted three months. Hundreds of kids from schools across the Toronto District School Board received two new chapters of the novel-in-progress each week. The following week they responded with suggestions, comments, corrections and ideas for improving the plot. Eric responded to
every
email, whether it was from a school or an individual student. The students' suggestions have created significant changes in the story, including things like changing the grade of characters, altering events in the plot, adding more of certain characters—real changes brought about by real readers. This book works so well with the research around getting boys involved in the reading process by getting them involved in the writing process and by developing critical literacy, which translates into boys actively connecting with the written material by asking critical questions about the accuracy, relevance, bias, truth, defects and politics of a piece of writing.

Schools and the community need to gear programs to motivate boys into reading. Simply starting up programs like book clubs and literature circles can encourage boys into reading. For instance, troubled by the startling statistics and our experience teaching boys in elementary schools, we have created programs like Read to Succeed, Boys to Men, Urban Speak: Just Say It, and Word Up—Digital Literacy.

Even for a non-professional, observing a room full of young children of both sexes at play is an instant education in the differences between them, and the inevitable educational consequences of those differences. While most girls are likely to be motivated by a desire for approval and their own standards of social responsibility, competitiveness seems to come as naturally to most boys as cooperation and conscientiousness to girls. Boys also seem to need rewards and a reliable ladder of progress to channel their competitiveness and keep them going.

Schools are now designed to be most beneficial to the self-disciplined and self-motivating, which, during childhood and adolescence, largely means girls. The epidemic of underachievement among boys in Canadian public schools is now so deep and widespread that it is taking on the proportions of a national crisis. Closing this gender gap requires awareness—by teachers, principals and parents. Only then can targeted solutions be developed to support our boys.

Creating a strong culture of literacy means that reading and writing permeates the school day—from “book talks” on the morning announcements to authors' festivals, book fairs, student publications, sustained silent reading times, library programs and a dozen other strategies.