Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream

Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. What do you know about the Supreme Court case that made racial segregation in public schools illegal? When did this decision take place? How have American schools changed in the years since? 

Teaching Suggestion: This question prepares students to read about a community—Odessa, Texas—that stubbornly resisted legal demands to integrate their schools and society. While the case of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka ended legal segregation in 1954, Odessa is a place that is “locked in time” and did not desegregate until it was forced to by a US district judge in 1982. Students should be encouraged to examine their understanding of segregation as they learn more about the schools in Odessa, Texas.  

• This article from The Conversation explains the reality of discrimination in public schools in 2023. 
• In this report, the Learning Policy Institute reviews the nearly 70-year legacy of Brown v. Board of Education and shows that school segregation is still part of the American education system today.

Short Activity

• High school football is enormously popular in different parts of the country, and certain communities—like the ones in Friday Night Lights—show an immense Devotion to Sports. Today, sports media organizations constantly evaluate and rank high school teams. Working in small groups, review a list of the 100 (or 300) top-ranked American high school programs at the moment. Choose one or more schools to research and share their story with the class. Note if any high schools from your area are football standouts. Consider the theme of Football: Opportunity or Exploitation?

Teaching Suggestion: This short activity orients the students to the lucrative and competitive world of high school football. Some students may have attended a school with a competitive program and be familiar with the attention and demands of these programs. Others, however, may not have experience with large, organized sports programs that receive national attention.

• Playfootball.nfl.com is one of many sites that keeps up-to-date rankings of high school teams.
• Students can see the rankings of individual high school athletes on many sites, including this one by ESPN.

Personal Connection Prompt

This prompt can be used for in-class discussion, exploratory free-writing, or reflection homework before reading the text.

Are you an athlete? Have you ever played on a team? Did winning and losing have an emotional effect on you?

Teaching Suggestion: This prepares the students for the setting of highly skilled, competitive athletes that populate this book. The players on the various teams in Friday Night Lights dedicate their lives and place their hopes in their athletic prowess, and many are extraordinarily gifted. Students may offer non-athletic forms of competition, such as e-sports, debate, chess, or the like. Teachers should feel free to share their own athletic backgrounds. 

• This article from NPR examines how sports can offer different opportunities for young people.  
• This article from Education Week shows the shrinking opportunities for less affluent children to play sports.