Expository Essay – How Extracurricular Activities Benefit Students
In the movie Coach Carter, Ken Carter takes a job as a basketball coach at his old high school in Richmond, California. Upon taking this job, Coach Carter decides to help these underachieving students not only achieve heightened basketball skills, but academic skills as well. While the students are resistant at first, they eventually cooperate with their coach in order to preserve their only escape from stress. While not all students are involved in basketball, most students participate in extracurricular activities. These activities help students improve themselves by providing them with an escape from life and its complications, helping them focus better in class, and by increasing work ethic when they are passionate about something.
Extracurricular activities help students improve their focus in class by providing them with a break from their hectic daily schedule. To illustrate, imagine a freshman named Yahnis who wakes up at 5:00am every morning so he can balance his time between his many activities such as seminary, academics, and athletics. Throughout his day many things cause him stress, confusion, and anger, especially his intense English class that contains a massive workload. After school, Yahnis goes to the tennis courts, the only place besides his home he actually feels comfort, and every time his racket connects with the ball the wild mixture of emotions within him is released with the force of a nuclear explosion into the bright yellow tennis ball. Because Yahnis is able to release these emotions instead of having to store them up within himself, the raging river of confusion that resides in his mind evaporates, allowing him to think clearly. Students experience this form of relief in their chosen extracurricular events whether they have chosen FFA, band, or even debate, because through any activity that is chosen students can replace their turbulent sea of stress with a peaceful meadow that provides clarity to their thoughts and additional focus in the classroom.
In addition to increased focus and an escape from everyday life, extracurricular activities also help students better themselves by improving work ethic. For example, world renowned inventor Thomas Edison was passionate about science so he would often spend time after school as a child reading about energy and electricity. As he read he thought of new and creative ways to more efficiently accomplish everyday activities. This extracurricular activity instilled a strong work ethic within Edison which led to his many great inventions such as the light bulb, which took Edison more than 1,000 attempts to finish correctly. Now, Edison’s invention is used throughout the world. Without strong work ethic Edison would have never had the perseverance to see the project through. Similarly, modern day extracurricular activities help students develop work ethic by providing them with complicated problems that require perseverance to solve. Little by little their work ethic is strengthened, eventually reaching a point where they are undaunted by any task. Goals then become more easily attainable and the success rate is increased tenfold due to the increased amount of persistence put into attaining the goal.
Just like basketball benefitted the academically challenged boys in the movie Coach Carter, extracurricular activities help benefit students by providing them with an escape from the worries of life so they can be more focused in class and by improving work ethic.
April 10, 2015