Pairing Olympic athletes with classrooms across the country

Times Reporter     

 

Classroom Champions, a program that pairs Olympic and Paralympic athletes with schools, made its way to Canada this year. The program began in the United States in 2009, and is the pet project of Olympic gold medalist Steve Mesler and his sister Dr. Leigh Parise. Mesler said they began the Classroom Champions initiative for a few different reasons. 

“One of them was because all of a sudden I was living this life that a 10-year-old would have dreamt of. I was an Olympian, all of my friends were Olympians and I was heading into what was going to be my third and final Olympics. That was something that my sister and I could have only dreamt about when we were kids and I wanted to do something with it,” said Mesler.  

“We wanted to do something that we would have thought was cool when we were 10, but at the same time, more importantly, we wanted to do something that would be more impactful then just the classic athlete goes to a school, gives a talk, spends some time with the kids and then usually never see the kids again. We thought we could do better than that.”

Mesler and Parise wanted to be able to form actual relationships with the kids, but also knew that during the Olympic year – he was preparing for the 2010 winter games in Vancouver – he wasn’t going to have time to go and see these kids all the time. That’s where technology really came into play. He was able to record lessons and share them, and his experiences, with the students. 

The current school year has been a pilot of the initiative in Canada, and due to its success the plan is to significantly expand Classroom Champions across the country next year. There are classrooms in 26 schools across Canada currently involved in Classroom Champions. 

Mesler and Parise also measure the impacts that their program is having. One thing they wanted to make sure of, said Mesler, was that it wasn’t just some program that Olympians are doing because it felt good, but that it was also one that was making a measurable impact.

“We’re looking at kids and we’re getting surveys and feedback from the kids showing that they are better at goal setting, they’re doing it more often, their digital literacy is up, their perseverance skills have increased. We’re hearing from teachers that the kids are far more engaged in school,” said Mesler. 

Once an Olympian explains what it means to set a goal in short, medium and long term, and explains the steps, it opens up a new language for the kids and helps them with their own goal making, said Mesler, especially when they can see the athlete fail and/or succeed throughout the year. 

“In order to be a full time mentor for the year you have to still be competing full time, you can’t be a retired athlete. We want kids to see that it’s a struggle,” said Mesler. 

Every month the athlete sends a different video lesson on a different subject. The kids will then send stuff back to the athlete to show what they’re learning based upon what was sent to them that month. 

Rhiannon MacDonnell, a Strathmore High School graduate from 2002, is on the board with Classroom Champions and would love to see the program make its way into her hometown.   

“I would love that, I am obviously a product of the Strathmore schools. I look back on my time there and the educators that went above and beyond in service of my education are probably the reason I got a PhD and became an educator myself,” said MacDonnell.

“If I can help connect the educators in my hometown with a resource I feel is really valuable and could make the lives of their current students better, then that would make me very happy.”

MacDonnell is a professor of marketing at a business school in London, England and has a background in psychology, decision-making and impacts. She works closely with Parise on the theoretical side of things with Classroom Champions. She and Parise look at what are they trying to do, what are they trying to accomplish and how are they doing with the initiative.

One of the important pieces that is talked about in the Classroom Champions program is citizenship skills, teaching respect, treatment of others and helping with community projects and initiatives. 

“What we do is we provide a form for educators, resources for educators to do a good job of engaging kids in that and it really gets kids involved and it helps their learning in that domain. So in terms of citizenship skills we perform very well there because we provide resources and mobile platforms and kids get really excited about it,” said MacDonnell. 

The application deadline for Classroom Champions is March 31. For more information, or to apply, go to http://www.classroomchampions.org.