The American Culture Club Resumes

Yesterday I taught the first session of this term's American Culture Club.

Last term, we read Langston Hughes' "A Dream Deferred" and read parts of speeches by Martin Luther King, Jr. and Barack Obama. My goal was to help my Moroccan students better understand the American Dream and how the African-American experience related to it. I had four or five regular students, and by the end, I think they had a pretty decent idea of American history with a more nuanced view of American racism.

This semester, I hope to develop the same theme but move it in a different direction. We're going to watch "Remember the Titans" and learn about American football and school integration.

Most Moroccans don't have a clue just how much American culture revolves around football. Three of the questions on my pre-test I gave to the class yesterday queried them about which days of the week high school, college, and NFL games take place. When they realize that football starts on Friday night, continues Saturday, and doesn't end until Sunday night (or Monday night as the case may be), they start to come to grips with how much football the American fall weekend contains.

After the pre-test, I introduced my students to American football by showing them the highlights from the 2007 Fiesta Bowl when my beloved Oklahoma Sooners lost in startling fashion to the upstart Boise State Broncos. It was a good opportunity to show how a game works, explaining the key positions and rules along the way. By the end, I was asking them to predict what the teams were going to do. Impressively, all four of my students (three veiled girls and one boy) correctly predicted that Boise State would go for the two-point conversion in overtime.

The hour and a half allotted to the club flew by. At the end of the period, I had to smile.

I thought to myself, "I just got paid to talk about football for over an hour."