Spring SCORES with the Tigers, Part III: Rainy days and surveys

This spring, we are following Amidon-Bowen's season highlighting their service-learning project, but also attending games and soccer practices. The Tigers are located in Southwest D.C. in Ward 6. You can follow along on Twitter and Instagram.

Written by Dahlia Chaudhury
Communications Intern

It was a dreary Monday, and there had been little stopping the drizzle all day. The Amidon-Bowen Tigers did not let that keep them from learning, though.

Instead of having practice outside, the Tigers all filed in to Coach Lee's classroom for an indoor soccer lesson. Coach Lee and Coach Carlos talked to the poet-athletes about their work and effort in practice, and how that can affect the outcome of games. Afterward, students reviewed positions and roles on the field.

Next, Coach Lee stepped up the indoor practice by taking the students upstairs to run laps with the track team. After 6-8 laps, the students were red-faced, breathing heavily and ready to begin service-learning.

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Once settled with Coach Pecot, the service-learning lesson began; they were covering the process of creating and using surveys. First, Coach Pecot wrote a survey about smoking on the board for the students to complete. After practicing answering questions, the students brainstormed, in small groups, questions that they could ask their school community regarding their health habits.

The coaches encouraged the students to think outside of yes or no questions. Some students created questions that had answers from strongly agree to strongly disagree. Others thought free response questions could give them more information on the respondent.

One student, Ryan J., told me he wanted to ask, "Do you like junk food? Do you want to stay healthy? When you eat do you have all 5 food groups on your plate?" He thought that people would be more likely to take the survey and finish it if the questions had yes or no answers.

By the end of the session, the students had made great progress in determining the best way to gauge community members' attitudes about healthy living and how they can encourage fitness for all. Fight 4 Fitness is well on its way to being a very successful service-learning project!