Volleyball Coaching Life-Taking a Ride

As we wind through the NCAA tournament, we see a lot of the personalities of the players and coaches come through. Two stuck out in my mind for a thing that linked them. Many other coaches probably said or expressed the same sentiments, but I didn’t see all the press conferences.

Travis Hudson of Western Kentucky and Dave Shondell of Purdue were addressing the gathered press after losses in the tournament. Both are veteran coaches, and both are high caliber coaches and people. Both talked about the disappointment of getting beat and not moving on in the tournament. Both expressed appreciation for their players, coaching staff, administrators, and institutions. The thing that perked my ears up was when they talked about how their players took them on a long, extended, and joyous ride. Both thanked their players for giving them the gift of experiencing the successes of this season and this year’s tournament.

This stood out in my mind because usually coaches are buried in the details of administering to the team, thinking about the strategy and tactics of the game, boiling the details of the chess match over and over in their heads, and all the million and one details of being the leader of a team, an organization. Many coaches look at the successful season as a goal achieved, that point of view is similar to that of the project manager planning and making sure everything executes according to plan and reacting to each situation when it does not go according to plan, all the while hitting your marks as planned. A significant deviation from that mode of thinking is that a sports team is not a machine or a process, a sports team is a unique aggregation of many moving parts, fueled by passions, resiliency, desire, high level execution, both mentally and physically, and the all-important intangibles.

The intangibles are what makes life interesting, it is the reason that we play the game rather than decide wins and losses by simulation. This is what makes playing sports so exciting and enjoyable, that substantial chunk of uncertainty makes the emotions soar and dip and it makes the adrenaline ebb and flow.

The reason that I loved hearing Travis and Dave talk about being taken for a ride by their players is that they implicitly acknowledge that for every thing that they do, for everything that they had planned and implemented, taught, trained, and refined, the ball is in the hands of the players. It is through the generosity of the players’ spirit; the largess of their commitment to the coaches’ vision; their willingness to be in pain and uncomfortable; and their love of their team, teammates, and coaches, which is exemplified by the sacrifices they make in suppressing their selfish tendencies for the greater good of their team. Indeed, it is an amorphous and ambiguous spirit that can’t be described by mere words that creates the magic, that puts a team on a magic ride to greatness.

It takes experience, maturity, and self-awareness for someone to recognize that no matter how much influence a person has over a large organization such as a volleyball team, they are just along for the ride. While they contribute and affect all parts of what gets the ride going and moving successfully, in the end, the difference between the magical and the mundane is due to the players, the trust, the love, the discipline, the self-sacrifice, and of course, how one deals with the intangibles that turns good seasons into great seasons.

Much respect to Travis and Dave.

Book Review-How Learning Works 7 Research Based Principles for Smart Teaching. Ambrose, Bridges, DiPietro, Lovett, and Norman

This book is a part of a series from Jossy-Bass Higher and Adult Education series. I bought it on the recommendation of the learning resources center staff. They presented parts of the material during their new staff orientation.

I had two intentions, one was to have some resources at my disposal for the latest pedagogical theories to help my teaching and I also wanted to learn about these research based principles to help my coaching.

The structure of the book is straightforward, the introduction laid out the seven principles and stated their purpose: to bridge the research and teaching practices. The succeeding seven chapters laid out the seven principles, gave scenarios for the readers to digest and analyze. They discussed the theory and experimental results that supports each argument within the principles. The last section is a conclusion that reiterates the principles to close out the book. They have also included the eight tools that they have cited in the body of the book in the appendices to help the reader learn more about the implementation and pitfalls associated with these tools.

I found the presentations workmanlike, which is as intended. The idea is to present the principles cogently and logically, even though the topics that are covered are anything but coldly rational.

I was personally very interested in how students develop mastery and how they can become self-directed learners. Those two chapters drew me in when I first looked at the table of contents. As I read the book in the sequences presented by the author I was drawn into other principles, specifically, the chapters on how the student’s prior knowledge affected their learning and how they organized their knowledge made them look at the knowledge that they are accruing really made me think about those topics. I knew that those topics affect the students learning but I was not clever enough to see how teachers can incorporate tools to help the students deal with their lack of prior knowledge and how much the knowledge organization affect their learning process. Indeed, I started to think about my own learning process, and how ineffective some of my learning habits are, and yet I continue to persist in pursuing the same methods.  I am changing my ways in response to that lesson.

The chapter on how the practice and the kind of feedback help the student to learn is enlightening because it gives me ideas on how to change my usual teaching tools to make the experience more productive for my students. The feedback topic is an important one and it is here that I received a lot of reassurance that the feedback skills that I have employed in my teaching and coaching are good practices and that my instincts were good ones. I did also profit from gaining more understanding of how feedback can be used.

The chapter on motivation and course climate were difficult ones for me, I took for granted that the motivation for the students are their responsibilities, that they were taking the class or playing on a team for a reason, that they were thusly motivated and I would have something to do with that, but not a lot. I am still a bit skeptical. I feel that motivation should be a personal decision, while I, as the teacher, can help them get more motivated by being a great teacher and being fair in my assessment of their abilities, I didn’t feel that I can make that much difference in how they are motivated. I am still dubious.

On the topic of the course climate, I can see where this chapter would be very useful and very pertinent in a social science class. I am in engineering so that we don’t have too much social discussions. I do see where the social climate of a class can make or break the classroom success of the students by how the class interacts socially and the kind of expectations that they the students and me the teacher would have due to the social constructs, societal norms  and stereotypes that are realities in our society. Those issues really speak to the kind of person the teachers are and how their root beliefs guide them in their daily interaction with the students. Knowing that the effect on the students is an important part of opening the teacher’s eyes to the reality that they face but I m dubious about how they can transform their teaching according to this principle without completely changing their world view.

I will be referring back to this book often as I go forth in continuation of my teaching career. The principles are somewhat commonsensical, which makes it so much more acceptable.  The no-nonsense layout of the arguments and methods are very welcome. The magical thing about the book is that it gives practical advice while also providing the readers with enough untethered hooks to hang onto intellectually so that they are challenged. This gives the readers some degrees of freedom to reflect on the ideas and allows them to progress the principles forward in their own ways.