Teachers and Sports Coaches Learn A lot from Each Other

Vicky Tong started coaching seventh and eighth-grade students cross-country in 2012. She accepted the job as the school where she teaches required somebody to do it. She figured out that this is an additional work which would follow naturally from her duties as a middle school science and Chinese teacher. This will also complement her interest in running. When she got this offer, she was training for a half-marathon so the timing seemed perfect.

Now, its been six years since she is coaching and when she looks back on her earlier reasoning with amusement, she realized that coaching is not like the classroom, it’s very different. In addition, technical knowledge of the sport is very essential but far less critical to be successful than other skills. So, her experience in the classroom helped her in becoming a better coach and her experience with athletes helped her in becoming a better teacher.

It is not possible to know how many teachers are coaches and coaches are teachers, according to Dan Schuster, the director of coach education at the National Federation of High Schools. But he believes that the greater demands on coaches’ time lead to fewer teachers coaching multiple sports throughout the school year. This change has been forced by pressure from parents and clubs to give attention more on “the X’s and O’s”.

The apparent decline in teacher-coaches marks a decrease in the significant insights that these bring to the student-athletes in front of them. Many interviews with several experienced teacher-coaches showcased what each could learn from the other.

The combination of learning and teaching leads to great performance. Teachers have a lot to learn from coaches according to Jeff Gilbert, a former teacher, and coach and currently principal of Hillsdale High School in San Mateo, California. This helps a lot in improving students learning if teachers included more public performances in their instruction. In the sports sphere, players practice their skills to play the game in a better way, and coaches upgrade what and how they train on the basis of the performance of the athletes. Classroom students would benefit from similar high-stakes public performances, where they showcase what they’ve learned. In this way, the learning has an aim, the same as throwing and catching drills in baseball.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52825/what-teachers-and-sports-coaches-can-learn-from-each-other