The Benefits of Working in Teams

       In my capacity as head of school, I am fortunate to have many opportunities to watch our students perform as members of groups and teams. Whether they are competing as players on  interscholastic athletic teams or performing as members of vocal, instrumental, or theatrical ensembles—or they are like many of our students who do a combination of the above—our Bobcats are working with others for the benefit of their groups.  Although this can sometimes be difficult for adults, it can be an even more challenging task for adolescents as they struggle to learn who they are in relation to others. Just as they are figuring out who they wish to be, they are being asked to sublimate their sense of self for the well-being of their peers, who are also developing their own personalities. Consequently, when a group of diverse teenagers, however one may define diversity, comes together to form a well-functioning and effective unit, it is a wonder to behold.   
I thought about our students as team members last week as I read an excellent best-selling book, The Boys in the Boat: Nine Americans and Their Epic Quest for Gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by Daniel James Brown.  A Bosque parent recommended this book to me, and I encourage you to read it as well. It’s a thoroughly riveting and inspiring read about “a team of nine young athletes from the University of Washington who traveled to Berlin and vanquished the Germans’ hand-picked crew team.”  If you wish, you could partner it with Laura Hillenbrand’s Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, which is equally fascinating; a major part of this book also takes place during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. (At the risk of dating myself, I can remember as a child the thrill of meeting Jesse Owens one summer at sports camp.) 
Among the many passages that stood out in The Boys in the Boat, one struck me in particular.  Brown says, “And capitalizing on diversity is perhaps even more important when it comes to the character of the oarsmen.  A crew composed entirely of eight amped-up, overtly aggressive oarsmen will often degenerate into a dysfunctional brawl in a boat or exhaust itself in the first leg of a long race.  Similarly, a boatload of quiet but strong introverts may never find the common core of fiery resolve that causes the boat to explode past its competitors when all seems lost.  Good crews are good blends of personalities: someone to lead the charge, someone to hold something in reserve; someone to pick a fight, someone to make peace; someone to think things through, someone to charge ahead without thinking.  Somehow all this must mesh.  That’s the steepest challenge. Even after the right mixture is found, each man or woman in the boat must recognize his or her place in the fabric of the crew, accept it, and accept the others as they are.  It’s an exquisite thing when it all comes together in just the right way. The intense bonding and the sense of exhilaration that results from it are what many oarsmen row for, far more than trophies or accolades.  But it takes young men or women of extraordinary character as well as extraordinary physical ability to pull it off.”  
At the same time that our Bosque students, your children, travel the road of self-discovery as individuals, they also have the opportunity to explore being members of various teams or groups, where they will become part of a community of individuals that achieves the maximum benefit for all by emphasizing the strengths of each one. Again and again, Bosque students act as “young men and women of extraordinary character” as individuals and as teammates, and we are very proud of them.