Great Story About Pilots

In a packed room, students in DeAnn VanNess’ second-grade class fire questions across the table like journalists. Their subjects, lanky young men in black warm-ups, can hardly keep up with the interrogation.

It’s just after 2 p.m. Tuesday, and the 7- and 8-year-old reporters were given the task of interviewing each player of University of Portland’s Pilots basketball team. From their notes, they will write an article:

“What is your favorite vacation spot?”

“What’s your favorite color?”

“Is college really that hard?”

Feverishly, they write each player’s answer in their notebooks. This assignment demonstrated to VanNess’ students at Columbia Valley Elementary School how note-taking and writing can be fun as well as educational.

And it helped that most of her students are die-hard Pilots fans.

“I have so many boys who love sports and this hooked them,” VanNess said. “This is the first time I’ve found they’ve been excited about something all year long.”

Tuesday’s writing lesson was just a small piece of months of Pilots-based curriculum in reading, writing and math. VanNess’ son is the team’s ball boy, so the teacher thought it would be fun to incorporate team members into her lessons.

It started when her class sent the Pilots paper dolls of Flat Stanley, the children’s book character. The class also attended games and met and got autographs from players. However, Tuesday’s visit was the first by the team to the school.

In the weeks before the visit, students learned how to measure feet and inches by charting the players’ heights, and mounting the results on the wall outside the classroom door. Player biographies on the team’s Web site served as fodder for expository writing pieces — and raised questions for further work. So they used this week’s visit for interviews.

It wasn’t long after the interviews started before students grabbed their Pilots’ posters and autograph tablets for players to sign. Grinning big and showing off their fan buttons, they posed while VanNess took pictures.

“I’m going to go to UP,” gushed student Rayemond Farr. “I’m going to be on the Pilots.”

Ethan Niedermeyer, a sophomore forward, said the children’s exuberance was among the reasons why the basketball players took a trip to the school.

“I’ve seen a lot of these kids at the games,” Niedermeyer said. “It’s a way for them to have someone to look up to. Because a lot of us had that growing up and it helped.”