A Healthier Active Classroom

A Healthier Active Classroom

Last spring I was asked to do a long term substitution for a very good friend of mine. She was going into the hospital for surgery. I went in early to meet her class. They were all the 7^th graders in an all boy’s school. She was a Science teacher and I would be there for six weeks. What an outstanding teacher she is. She had laid out the chapters, assignments, and tests for me on the side counter. Any time I had a question I could call her.

The academic part went really well. I even had the chance to bring in my daughter, who was a senior in high school, a straight a student, and a science whiz, to teach a couple of classes. She was brilliant! Way better than me. She has the touch teaching kids. She was so professional. I was beaming with pride.

Ironically, some of the parents called and complained, and the head of the science department came down to my class to talk about what I had done. He was very good about it though. But geez, Molly knew more little details than I did about what we are studying. The kids loved her and they learned a lot. (And so did I) I used what she taught these two classes with the other three.

What an opportunity to be with an age group that was right at the cusp of puberty or just getting to it. There were plenty of athletes in the five classes I taught and there were about 100 children total. At least half of the total played sports, and they played many different sports. What a laboratory for me!

First things first though. I had to gain their trust. I started out by having them print their names with their opposite normal writing hand on their first “packet.”

I wanted them to understand balance, and teach them a little humility while having fun. I then explained to them life was about the journey and that they would become better at writing with the opposite hand the more they practiced using it. Continuing to do the same thing the same way over and over would lead to the law of diminishing retunes.

As the time passed I started to notice a disturbing trend. Kids were missing classes on Friday and some were coming in Monday obviously tired. The teacher had given me the grading book to record grades. It became quite obvious that most if not all of the children who missed class on Fridays were athletes. The children coming in tired on Mondays were part of that same group. I then started to chart their homework assignments, reading comprehension form the assigned readings, and their test scores.

 The data gained was very revealing. The more absences, the more tired they were. The more tired they were the poorer there work was, and ultimately, their test grades suffered.

This did not apply to all, but I have done enough research on this topic that the data was compelling, and I was able to predict, before a test was taken, for the most part on how the tired students would fair.

Here was my solution. Since this school had incorporated the block scheduling into their curriculum, where the children have an hour and fifteen minute classes two days a week, I decided to try an experiment.  I could not match this teacher’s knowledge of science. (I have degrees in history, psychology, and philosophy, with a Masters in education) I had to come up with a different approach to help these children feel better and fresher, so they could do better I theorized.

“Simon Sez.” Yep. It just hit me one night when I couldn’t sleep. I was worried about the job I was doing. It seemed to be going well and the feedback was good, but I thought I could do better for these kids. They needed to be more active. I called my friend and she agreed that I could try it. What a hit it was. I started it. Then I let the kids lead. Some were good, some weren’t. We encouraged the kids to be positive and everyone got a chance. The enthusiasm was infectious. They began to ask when we were going to play “Simon Sez.”

I would tell them if we got this amount of work done and everyone participated, and helped each other we would play. The results were outstanding.

When the teacher called me after she had recorded the final grades form the last test an amazing fact emerged. The children’s grades, for the most part went up! She even told me she was considering adding it to her curriculum.

I love kids.

Stop Telling Us What We Want: We Can Speak for Ourselves Part 3

Having coaches scream at your kids to make them better is simply giving you a reason to say you are not a hover parent. Another news flash for you: a coach that screams at their players so they won’t be mediocre or suck is a type of hover parent, one who is trying to avoid bad things happening to the kids by playing the role of the bad guy and toughening them up so the real world won’t hurt them. Old-school coaches are hover parents trying to achieve the same goal by using opposite to the traditional means so they can tell themselves they aren’t hover parents.

Making me do punishment laps will not make me feel “pardoned” nor will I finish those laps smiling. It will not toughen me up, teach me to shut up and take it, or teach me to stop “embarrassing” myself through my poor play. I will eventually resent you, be angry at my parents for making me go through it, and start taking that anger out on others.

 I’ve met those kids, the people they are outside of their house, away from the yelling and negativity in youth sports and some parenting are not happy people. These are my friends you are talking about. Many are angry, they are withdrawn, they are depressed, they are bullies, and they are hurting, looking for ways to take from other people the love and joy they never had because that’s the only way to make themselves feel better.

I learned how to sacrifice myself for the good of my teammates, not the idea of my ‘team,’ without anyone yelling at me because I knew I could trust them and because they would do the same for me. In the environment my team created, I wanted to sacrifice myself to show my teammates they were so important to me and deserving of that sacrifice, a high complement if ever there was one.

Ask any kid, they will tell you they want a coach to encourage them, but also give them fair guidelines and just discipline. Those are the coaches your kids will enjoy playing for, their lessons are the ones they will remember because they used them, and those coaches will be the ones to find the “it” inside of your kids that makes them perform at the top of their game. They will help mold my child into a happy, upstanding, confident individual. “I am inclined to stand back and let them.”

            I am a former club swimmer, as well as a youth hockey and little league baseball player, and the product of six years of travel soccer. I never played for my high school team, preferring my travel soccer team, and I do not play for my college. I would like to thank VJ for allowing me to guest blog these past few weeks.

Stop Telling Us What We Want, We Can Speak for Ourselves Part 2

You really want to get a point across to your players? Get really quiet. They have to lean in if they want to hear you, and if you are the type of person that is always loud enough to be heard over the roar of a playing arena, show them that this point is important enough to warrant a drastic, yet logical and calm, change in your behavior. You want to let them know you are upset? Show them you are disappointed. It is one of the worst feelings ever to know that someone you trust and that trusts you is disappointed in you. The guilt alone should do your work for you, without needing to lose your voice at the end of a practice or game.

I wanted to go to soccer practice, which was only two or three times a week, because I was surrounded by people who praised me when I did something right, helped me correct what was wrong, made me laugh, and made me feel like I was an integral part of a team. I didn’t want to play for my high school team because the coach believed in little more than winning, and building a team community was NOT on her priority list. I didn’t want to play for a coach who wouldn’t play her players based on performance, but rather the place she believed they deserved based on their talent. This is a type of entitlement, one that “old-school” coaches believe in so they can stop the ridiculous “embarrassment” they think follows poor playing or lack of talent.

Most kids join a team at a young age because they want to have a good time with their friends and because they want to feel like they belong somewhere. An “old-school” coach takes both of those things away from the child, and so they quit, rightly so, to find other avenues that will give them those feelings.

Another argument she makes is that people in the real world will not boost her kids’ egos, so if they get used to it early, they will know how to deal with it. Another load of crap. Yes, my parents and my coaches told me when I wasn’t doing my best, and yes, not everyone in the real world has the opinion of me that my parents do. But by not yelling at me and being derogative, they taught me how to examine their point of view, find the truth in it, and apply it to my life. If I had an “old-school” coach, I would be filled with anger and resentment, and every time someone tried to tell me what I did wrong, that anger would be brought back, blinding me to the truth in their words.

Being scared of parents who pamper their kids instead of subjecting them to these awful coaches and allows them to get fat off that pampering is a bit extreme, but understandable. However, I would argue that, because you are against one extreme, the other is better? Not wanting to be a hover craft and a military tank type of parent, destroying all opposition and negativity that could touch their child before it happens, is also understandable. My parents didn’t want to let anything bad happen to me, but they let me fall when I was a child and make mistakes because they knew they could fix it if I couldn’t figure out how. But they had the patience, trust, and belief in me to let me try.

I am a former club swimmer, as well as a youth hockey and little league baseball player, and the product of six years of travel soccer. I never played for my high school team, preferring my travel soccer team, and I do not play for my college.

Stop Telling Us What We Want, We Can Speak for Ourselves Part 1

My name is Molly, I am 18 years old, and I am a freshman in college. I recently read an article in Esquire in defense of coaches who yell. It was written by a woman who states that she is a mom, a careful parent, and a feminist. She outlines how she has taken the best care of her kids from conception onward, including enrolling them in a school that, to quote an online dictionary, is based on a system of education through free and guided play. She then spends parts of  the rest of the article arguing in favor of coaches who yell, coaches she calls “old-school style.” She states that it is ok for a coach to yell negative things at her kids and others because they do it for the benefit of the team. They are striving to bring out the very best in every kid so the team can be as great as possible. What a load of crap!

 I do not for one second believe that every “old-school” coach yells for purely extrinsic reasons, especially these days when everyone seems to be a lot more angry than they used to be, for the time, money, and pressure encompassing the world we live in.. They don’t want to be embarrassed in front of others because of a poor score, or because people see their kids as “soft.”

Wow. News flash, a youth sports game has nothing to do with the coach or the parents. Hence the youth part of youth sports. You don’t play in the game, and you do little more than act as a guide and allow your players to create an environment full of positivity. Maybe you teach us a drill or two, but what you really (should) do is teach us how to act as a team.

She often refers to the fact that she suffered the same abuse (which is what it is, because if a parent did that to their own child in public, there is a chance CPS would be called) as a child in sports, and it made her tougher, taught her to “take an unfair ass-kicking and shut up about it.”

She goes on to say that she believes in coaches who don’t care if a child is scared in the deep end or four years old, they will scream regardless. I would argue, first, that this unfair treatment and borderline abuse.

 Second, her coach, and/or maybe her parents, made her an angry human being who feels that, since it happened to her, everyone else should know the pain she suffered. If you let your kids suffer the consequences of your childhood problems, you need to calm down and reevaluate your role as a parent. Third, as a child who played travel soccer for a coach who never yelled, surrounded by parents who yelled nothing but encouragement (if anything at all), I can guarantee that we the players hear NOTHING anyone yells at us from the sidelines.

If you do yell at us, we are smart enough to recognize it as unnecessary, and we tune you out. When you yell things at us that are not true or just plain derogatory, we lose respect for you and we grow to resent you and you lose our trust, the most important part of any relationship between adult and child. Then you wonder why you have trouble disciplining us, why we don’t want to hang around you anymore, and why we strive to be as different from you as possible when we are parents.

You loathe yelling teachers? What is a coach if not a teacher in sports? If someone is in my face, screaming at me to do better, yes I will initially try to do better. But after a while, I will do so poorly so consistently that the coach will have no choice but to bench me. He no longer has a way of criticizing me for my playing if I’m not playing. Didn’t think about that, did you, old-school coach?

I am a former club swimmer, as well as a youth hockey and little league baseball player, and the product of six years of travel soccer. I never played for my high school team, preferring my travel soccer team, and I do not play for my college.

Scholarships to "Babes"

Scholarships to “Babes”

I keep reading about Colleges, specifically Division I colleges through their coaching staff, “offering” scholarships to children as young as 13 years old, and probably younger.

I have so many problems with this train of thought and action that I decided to write about it.

First. Let me state categorically that NO ONE is qualified to say whether a child, and let’s be clear, these are children we are talking about, is going to be developing now and in the future to be able to play at the D1 level at the age of 12. Puberty changes everything. Only about 10% of all the children who are the “best” at the age of 12 or 13 are still the best at ages 18-20. You May be able to make an educated guess, but that guess has so many peripheral consequences  to the children and families receiving this attention, that it should not be practiced.

Why would anyone want to be that kind of pressure on a child? It should be common sense logic that the more comfortable a child is, the more relaxed they will be, and then, we HOPE, will be able to continue to develop.

I cannot imagine what it would be like to be that child. I have read numerous articles on this topic and am trying to find more. I have been told by two different people that they “know” a child who received this scholarship offer at a very young age and are playing in college right now.

What they don’t say, and I certainly know why, is that out of the 7 MILLION children playing high school sports presently, only 1% will play at the D! Level, and even microscopically fewer will be found at this young  age to be worthy of such attention.

But it seems more and more people want to be attached to this “money and fame wagon” so it is extremely doubtful this ridiculous behavior will desist. Heck, it probably is going to get worse as more and more people fantasize about it.  Younger and younger kids are being drawn into this with their families. But the publicity it generates will not represent what the majority, the vast majority, are incurring while playing youth sports.

 And say what you want about the NCAA, or have heard, they do have rules, and they do enforce them. A child must graduate from their junior year in high school with the appropriate courses taken and passed that leads to a preparedness to attend college. The athlete must get a number from the NCAA Clearing House to be able to accept that scholarship. Actually there are two documents you must sign: the first is your letter of intent, and the second one is the accepting of the financial aid. The college coach and the family agree on the financial part. But as you have seen from watching my videos, that amount and even if the scholarship stays intact, can and do change from year to year. That’s right, every year the coach decides if the grant will be renewed and to what $ amount it will be renewed at.

A lot of fuss over a miniscule amount of children don’t you think? But, the profit, from chasing these kids and their dreams, and the status people believe they get, belies the fact that we are talking about children here and I can’t find one school teacher or Sports Psychologist who thinks this is a good idea for children. (And I believe adults)

Doubt

Doubt

We hear this word a lot in sports and in life. Many people go through life doubting their ability and therefore who they are. This doubt permeates their persona to such an extent that it affects relationships, performance, and outlook.

Doubt has now become part of the youth sports landscape. People doubt whether they are going to be able to get an athletic scholarship, or be able to pay for college. Children’ self worth, attached to their on field performance raises doubt in their minds. Family’s doubt whether they are going to be able to pay for their child’s participation in “elite” travel sports.

Youth sports in its original concept was supposed to help children manage, and erase that doubt by teaching them life skills and the importance of teamwork, hard work, sacrifice, and fun. How things have changed.

 Young athletes feel their bodies betraying them for the first time in their lives, with injuries, that children at such a young age should rarely if ever experience. They doubt whether they can keep up with the other kids playing on their team. Some children, feeling pressure from their coach and parents, doubt themselves.

 They do not understand, nor should they, why so much emphasis is being put on something that in it’s very description cites PLAY as an important, if not interval part of the experience. We say our children “Play youth sports.” That is right. We do not say our children have job at a very tender and influential young age. Because, for many children, coaches, and organizations youth sports has become so much more than it ever was intended to be.

And I doubt very much that this is a healthy thing.

At Frozen Shorts we have turned the tables on doubt. Every day we question the validity of the way the majority of people are being told, led, and treated in today’s youth sports environment. We question everything. We constantly test people and preconceived notions.

We believe strongly that this “doubt” is a healthy thing. It is a natural reaction to something that can be quite unhealthy for all involved. We want people to “doubt” the validity of what they are doing just as they would question and doubt a suggestion to go out on a frozen stretch of lake, or down a dark alley.

With the injury rate skyrocketing in youth sports and the more is better mantra permeating this environment, a small, but growing group of people are presenting empirical evidence that this journey is flawed and doubt seriously that the facts support the continued pursuit of scholarships versus the reality of the situation.

When 10 year old children are being described as “athletes” and talented, when in fact they are just children playing.  I have been told that we have to question the definition of fun, and that youth a sport does not have to be fun, I seriously doubt that. People have suggested to me that getting children back into the game instead of concentrating on them getting healthy is not such a bad thing. I doubt that.

But most of all I doubt whether children really want to do this. 70% of all children playing youth sports at the age of 10 quit by the time they are 13. I’m told they quit because of other interests. I doubt that and so do major studies done.

 In 20123 there are now more children playing video games than there are children playing youth sports. In a recent weekend the Staple Center in Los Angeles was sold out for a video team game tournament. Seems the creators have figured out a way to get the kids the enjoyment of playing youth sports and competing into their entertainment paradigm.

These kids have great eye hand coordination. They get to PLAY, not sit on the sidelines every day. They put together teams. They have tournaments, leagues. and standings. They compete just as if they were on a youth sports team, except for two major differences. They are sedentary and they don’t ever have to sit on the sideline and watch others play of they don’t want to. Someone has given them an alternative to today’s youth sports model.

The kids are voting, and I doubt whether the outcome is healthy.

if You Build it They Will Come..and Play

This is a story about a high school varsity team that set a record for most participants on the team at their school. As you probably already know, the sport does not matter to me. The coach, believing that an atmosphere of relaxed coaching, with no yelling and clam instruction, would be a way for athletes to perform at their best, and he thought that he would attract more children to his team using this method.

He started out coaching this team with only seven participants. As the years passed, and word spread amongst the students in this high school, other kids decided to try this sport. More and more kids started to come out for the team and soon this team was known for eclectic discussions, innovative games during practice, and charitable events.

The amount of fun was directly related to the children’s performance. It certainly seemed that the more the coach relaxed the atmosphere around his team the better they performed. Children were given repeated chances to play and when they did play they were enthusiastically supported by other teammates and the coach. They got better quicker than if someone had told what to do.

 In a day where kids are constantly being told what to do during a game by coaches, parents, and teammates, this coach decided to let the children’s own inner desire for competition be reinforced by letting them be creative and relaxed when they participated. No yelling at the kids. No deriding an athlete when they made a mistake. The coach gave constant encouragement to have fun while they were playing.

Sure there were detractors. I heard of people in the school disparaging the coach and his team for not playing their best players. They were scolded by people they competed against for having “too much fun” and disrespecting their sport. Quite interesting that adults, supposedly there to set an example and model the behavior they wanted the athletes to have, took a negative approach to this team’s actions and behavior. The coaches demanded that they be part of the show and get credit. They wanted validation, status, and status quo to be the rule. Times have changed. The world no longer believes the earth is flat!

Then it happened.

 I am getting this story second hand so I can only relate to you another person’s account, although I trust this person to tell the truth. During a practice six athletes on the team were given the opportunity, along with others, to play three games against each other. After two games were completed, one of the boys went up to the coach and asked him if it was okay if they switched teams. I’m told the coach asked why and the children’s response was classic. They had figured out how to make the teams even. On their own, and by having the coach create an atmosphere where all the kids would have a chance to compete, the kids wanted fairer competition. ALL ON THEIR OWN. They figured it out. Really, isn’t that our goal as coaches?

 The final game was extremely competitive. It created a stir amongst the other players on the team not playing in this contest and soon had a “playoff” atmosphere surrounding the participants.  The kids went at it under an aura of positive pressure and had a blast, high fiving each other, encouraging each other, and they played at a very high level!

By now, you should know how strongly I believe in this approach and the Zen of life. It is so much better for the children to be allowed to make mistakes in a safe and positive atmosphere than it is to constantly be at them with instruction. They got better with less instruction, not more! This example is going to resonate with the children for the rest of their lives.

When this story was related to me I was beaming. But being the tweaker that I am I commented to my friend that this story and team bothered me, and it bothered me quite a bit. You should have seen his face! Why I wondered, was this kind of coaching/teaching and the children’s response, an anomaly? Why wasn’t this standard operating procedure?

If we have anything to say about it here at Frozen Shorts, and we do, they, and other teams like theirs, will soon become the rule, a shining example, not the exception, for coaches to coach, for players to behave, execute their skills, and to have fun while playing youth and high school sports.