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CNS Story:
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SOX-TEACHER Oct-17-2005 (660 words) With photo. xxxn
White Sox fever has Catholic school children dancing in the street
By Steve Euvino
Catholic News Service
VALPARAISO, Ind. (CNS) -- This has been a memorable season for Chicago White Sox fans like Lynn MacLean. The second-grade teacher at St. Paul School has indoctrinated her class in the fun art of baseball as practiced on Chicago's South Side.
On Oct. 14, two days before the White Sox baseball team won the American League Championship Series over the Los Angeles Angels, MacLean's class was decked out for the Sox. In a class of 30 students -- 23 of them girls -- students were wearing Sox caps, jerseys and T-shirts.
MacLean, a die-hard Sox fan whose love of the game and that team goes back to her grandmother, has a Sox teddy bear and a 1959 Sox World Series shirt on her chair. On the blackboard near her desk are news clippings, souvenir towels, caps and a Sox team poster.
That display includes a box score and updated statistics on the Sox during the playoffs. Those scores and won-loss records are especially important to MacLean's students. When the Sox win, the teacher has promised, there's no homework the next day.
And there's a 50-50 chance that MacLean could have to pay up on another promise.
At the start of this school year, she said, she "foolishly" told her class that if the Sox win the World Series, there's no homework for the rest of the year.
"Now," she said, "I'm wondering about that. My principal is very nervous. Maybe I can promise them something else very special."
The White Sox were to face either the Houston Astros or the St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series beginning Oct. 22.
Principal Mary Knarr thinks the well-intentioned classroom Sox mania is cute. She quickly added, though, "I'm glad they don't play baseball all year long."
MacLean has incorporated baseball into daily class work. She assembled a timeline tracing the history of the White Sox, including, sadly, the Black Sox scandal of 1919 -- when Shoeless Joe Jackson and the favored Sox threw the World Series to Cincinnati for money.
The teacher also gives students a word of the day, and following the Sox's controversial win over the Angels on a questionable dropped third strike, MacLean offered this word to her class -- controversy.
MacLean also made the promise that her class could go dancing in the street if the Sox won in the playoffs. The Sox did, and so did the classroom. MacLean's class assembled in the street in front of school Oct. 14 and, with supervision, danced, yelled, got drivers to honk their horns and sang "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."
One student was particularly excited, MacLean said. "She said, 'I usually am not allowed to cross the street, and today I get to dance in the street.'"
MacLean's interest in baseball started with her grandmother, Minnie Billmeyer, who got the family watching the Sox and taught MacLean's father, Herb Billmeyer, how to pitch. He went on to pitch in the Air Force with Gene Mauch, now deceased, who managed the Philadelphia Phillies and Montreal Expos. MacLean's brother, Bruce, played college baseball for the University of Illinois.
These days, MacLean is passing on her knowledge and love of baseball to her students, who like following a team that is winning -- which for them means no take-home assignments.
"I like that they're winning and we're not getting a lot of homework," said student Anna Rastovski.
"It's a good season for the Sox, but the thing I'll remember most is dancing in the street," said classmate Jack Healy.
While Knarr appreciates the school spirit, she is not endorsing a no-homework policy. Nor is MacLean, who wants her students to get something more out of this winning Sox season.
"I want them to remember the fun of second grade," the teacher said. "Education doesn't have to be all serious stuff, and other things can be educational as well."
END
Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed.
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