On Friday, I had the pleasure of attending a student free-professional learning day and while, as always, it was loaded with an overwhelming amount of information to process, I find myself reflecting on the main topic of the day – the unwritten codes within our society. As my brain is want to do, I’ve started to dive down the rabbit hole of unwritten codes and how they impact upon our connections as well. I apologise in advance if some of this is difficult to grasp, a lot of it could very well be just me thought streaming, but I’d like to invite you down the rabbit hole with me and see where it leads.

The day was focused around the unwritten codes or rules within our society – and I’ve touched on it a little bit here before. Don’t talk over the top of people, children are served first at dinner functions, you don’t talk about finances with your work colleagues, and many many more rules that govern the way we interact with each other. If you break one unwritten code, you may find that people stare, if you break two, they begin to talk, three and they drift away from you, four or five and you find yourself isolated and wondering what happened and why. The presenter used the analogy of sports and the socio-economic status of people to explain how the codes work and influence us….

• People from generational wealth play Volley ball
• People from new money play AFL
• People with financial stability play Netball
• People who are experiencing situational hardship play Soccer
• People who are experiencing generational hardship play Basketball

From a teaching perspective and with the challenges in society at the moment, the majority of our students play Basketball. They know how to pass the ball, how to move through the stadium, how to shoot goals from the three point line. But we expect them to go to a place everyday – a school, that operates in a financial stability environment – and understand how to play Netball. The rules are completely different – all of a sudden they’re benched if they run with the ball, elbow an opponent, run across the divisions in the court or try to shoot from out of position. The question then becomes, how do we maintain the expectations of the Netball court, while supporting the Basketballers to develop the skills to interact, survive and thrive in both worlds?

When I look at it, these unwritten codes guide and apply to my own behaviour and experiences of the world. Have you ever been in a supermarket and the person in front of you in the line is becoming impatient, they start yelling at their child who’s crying out for attention, their language ramps up, their demeanour changes and you know that once they reach that check out, the poor employee is going to cop it? And you can’t help but judge – you’re uncomfortable with the way they’re speaking, with the language they’re using and the way they’re raising their voice, with the way they are treating their child. The person in front of you is operating from a different set of codes, a different set of rules than you are. You might not understand that code, because you don’t live in their world, you don’t play their sport. The sport that you play has different rules. And you know what? Those rules don’t reduce the person to less than status. It doesn’t mean that someone who plays Basketball is a bad person and someone who plays Netball is a good person. It just is.

We can use our understanding of these codes and people’s capacity within them, in the way we interact with others. Looking at it from the perspective of someone who plays a different game, with different rules than you do and understanding that it doesn’t make them less than and you greater than, helps us to remove judgement and criticism. In our interactions with each other, we need to learn to be fluent across hidden codes, to learn how to move the ball across multiple sports, if you will.

When you think about it, those sports also use different language – Netball has positions like Wing Attack and Goal Shooter, Basketball has Point Guards and Small Forwards, you can make contact in Netball, while you can earn a foul in Basketball. The language across the codes changes and so, we also need to teach and to learn different languages. We need to develop situational awareness of whether we use formal register or casual register – of whether we need to speak in the language of the Basketballers or the language of the Netballers – because if we start using Netball terms with Basketballers, then we lose connection, trust and respect. We unwittingly and unknowingly put them on the bench.

This explains so much of what sometimes feels like a conflict within me. I grew up in a family of Netballers, playing the game of Netball in an area where the majority of which played Basketball. I developed the ability to move across those codes and sometimes even find that my Basketball language interjects at times where I need to be speaking Netball and vice versa. At the moment, where I’m at in my life, I’m playing Soccer and functioning in a job that lives in the sport of Netball, teaching children who are predominantly from the world of Basketball. I find it difficult to interact with those who play AFL or Volleyball because the unwritten codes and the language are so vastly different, and I feel like I’m scrambling to figure it out.

It’s worth reflecting on what sport you play and how that impacts on your connections with others.

I’m also finding that my brain wants to explore the hidden codes within the Universe and on a Spiritual level, but that is a whole other rabbit hole and a whole other story for another blog post!