Friendships Games: The Pros and Cons
Friendship games are something very recurrent in our recent school lives. This semester alone we have had 3 school sport-related tournaments, just for High School! In the past years, we’ve only had 2 friendship games for High School, one for soccer and volleyball, and another for Track and Basketball. Although the friendship games are a great experience for everyone, there are some aspects of it that are hidden behind the scenes that can be somewhat detrimental to students and teachers.
First, let’s discuss the pros of friendship games. Friendship games are a great experience for our school to showcase our athletic prowess, through competition with the other american international schools in Bolivia. It allows the students to not only demonstrate their academic skills, but their athletic skills on the field and court.
Friendship games are also a great way to develop new connections with other students from the other international schools. Students, parents, and teachers all can develop new friendships and relationships through competition. Students can develop friendships on the field, through conversations at lunch time, and simply hanging out with each other in between games. Overall, the friendship games are a great way to make new friends, and meet new people by building connections.
All these pros also come with a couple of cons. Even though the friendship games bring a lot of excitement on the athletic end, it also brings a lot of stress on the academic end of our school. Both teachers and students get more stressed out around friendship games because they take a pause from teaching, to make time for these tournaments. This pause causes classes or students to get left behind in their classes, and come back from friendship games somewhat lost in each of their classes. The friendship games also cause a derailment in our curriculum, making it harder for teachers to plan classes for people in school, and participating in the tournaments. I think we should find more balance between the athletic aspect and academic aspect of our school.
In the end, I think that the friendship games are an awesome and key part of our school year, making new connections and friendships. At the same time, I think there could be slightly a bit more balance between athletics and academics in our school.
