No You Can’t... Oh Yes I Can! Obama for Kids

If you know your kids well enough here’s a little game you can play with them while you’re putting them through their Operation Pull Your Own Weight paces. I call it the No you can’t, Oh yes I can game, and here’s how it goes.

No You Can’t, Yes I Can
Just before a student grabs the bar and begins doing their pull ups, the overseeing adult says to him/her, “Johnny, I don’t know if you’re going to be able to do all those pull ups today.” The pre-arranged response from Johnny is to look the adult straight in the eye and say, “Oh yes I can,” before proceeding to do the expected number of pull ups. When he’s done, Johnnie gets an immediate high five from the teacher and his peers, along with the experience of having successfully stood up in the face of a challenge.

Habitual Response
Yes, everyone will know the whole thing is completely staged, but if handled correctly, and repeated over weeks and months, this role playing experience becomes much more than just theatre. It’s a practiced response that becomes a habit, a built in reaction that’s almost ingrained into Johnny’s regularly beefed up DNA giving him the psychological wherewithal and the confidence to confront a legitimate challenge (in this case pull ups) and to expect success.

The Best Time
The best time to incorporate this game is in the second or third week of the program when you’ve established a starting point for all the participants, and when progress is relatively guaranteed for the next 8, 10, or 12 more weeks. In other words you want Johnnie to accept the challenge, and to succeed in public week after week, month after month. That’s how it becomes a habit, and how the Oh yes I can attitude bleeds off into other parts of his life, such as his reading, writing, and his arithmetic.

Some Teachers Were Leery
Some teachers were a bit leery of this game, fearing the Oh yes I can response would turn into uncontrollable backtalk in the classroom. In their view, there’s plenty of that in our nation’s schools already without actively encouraging it.
My own experience is that when the kids know you’re on their side, helping to make them a little stronger every week, every month, all year long, they naturally respect you and they’ll keep a handle on their behavior in the classroom. It’s the kids (and the teachers) who lack confidence who are threatened by a challenge and who lash out in the wrong ways. If teachers and kids are both confident, the result is mutual respect.

Wanna Put $50 Bucks On It?
I confess that on one occasion I had a little guy respond to my challenge by saying “You wanna put $50 bucks on that?” All the other kids got a good laugh, after which I said, “I’ll put a nickel on it.” The young lad went on to do his allotted number of pull ups and happily took my nickel, along with my high five and congrats from the rest of his classmates. In the end, that kid turned out to be one of my best students, and he learned to say Oh yes I can to all kinds of challenges. Done it right, it works. Give it a try.