CAMBRIDGE – If you think of a roomful of people watching footage of NFL practices and games, chances are you don’t envision the film screening taking place at a lecture hall at Harvard University.Yet on Monday evening, that’s exactly what happened as the Harvard Graduate School of Education hosted a forum on “What the NFL Can Teach Teachers.”The forum featured former Baltimore Ravens cornerback Domonique Foxworth, who was elected president of the NFL Players Association last month; Brendan Ryan, the defensive line coach of the Minnesota Vikings; and his brother Tim Ryan, whose nonprofit, TNTP, helps train teachers.Among the topics raised in the discussion, which lasted for about an hour and a half, were how coaches, teachers, players and students could all master the fundamentals of their craft and stay motivated while doing so. These themes resonated with two North Shore high school football coaches who are also teachers, James Runner of Lynn Tech and Jim O’Leary of St. John’s Prep, when they were told about the talk a day later.Perhaps one part of Monday’s discussion that symbolized these issues was the film shown by Brendan Ryan, including footage from the days when he served as an assistant with the St. Louis Rams and game action between the Vikings and Dallas Cowboys. Audience members watched a defensive player work on maneuvering past their blocker in an attempt to get to the quarterback.”From a coaching perspective, fundamentals is my job, to develop a player to the best of my ability,” Brendan Ryan said. “It is my job to teach that scheme, to evaluate and come up (with it), and the nuances of a technique.””It is no different for a player,” Foxworth said. “We believe in the fundamentals we’re being taught. If you don’t believe in it, it doesn’t work. Every team does it differently. The important thing is to believe in the fundamentals and work towards mastering them.”For both O’Leary and Runner, the fundamentals also play a role in both coaching and teaching.”I don’t care how good, athletic, smart everybody is, you can’t do Algebra 2 before you do Algebra 1,” said O’Leary, who has 25 years of teaching experience in public and private schools.”When you say ‘fundamentals,'” said Runner, who is a special education teacher (literacy, writing and history) at the Clark Avenue Middle School in Chelsea, “it’s doing the small things to make you a great player. We’ll have fundamentals in practice situations where the starting offense is on the 1-yard line and has to get out of the end zone within three downs. If not, they have to punt.”He added, “We work on it during the week because you can’t tell (someone to do that) in the heat of battle.”Fundamentals play a similar role in classroom learning, he said, citing as an example that if a teacher gives a student notes on a Tuesday, the student should write down details such as the date and subject of the notes.”Always go over the small things,” Runner said. “On the MCAS or SAT, you can’t help a student.”The panel at Harvard, moderated by Time magazine contributor Andrew Rotherham, also addressed the issue of just how to stay motivated on the playing field or classroom.For professional players, Foxworth said, “We know why we’re doing it. We’re still complaining. A technique that will maybe pay off one time a year, we practice 10,000 times a year over the summer. It’s hard to motivate myself if it’s only going to pay off about 10 seconds over the course of the year.”I do know it’s going to pay off. I don’t know when I’m going to need it ? but I will need it.”North Shore coaches agreed with the importance of motivation as a learning tool, with Runner telling his student-athletes to view school as akin to a football game and homework as “how you prepare to take on your opponent,” he said, “and a grade like your victory.”O’Leary, who has served the Prep as teacher, coach and athletic director, said that when it comes to motivation, “You do it the same way. It starts at the top, whether y