Day 328: More Than A Game

Daily Blog Challenge Day 328/365

I always say that athletics helped prepare me for life and I see the benefit of them outside of wins and losses.  Sports can teach us many lessons if they are organized the correct way.  We do not teach people anything if we allow athletes to get away with poor choices, we elevate the status of athletes, we allow talent to overshadow hard work or we allow the heat of the moment to impact our behavior.

Why do we play sports?

Sports can help us stay in shape.  Sports can teach us how to interact with other people.  Sports can teach us how to control our emotions.  Sports can do many things to benefit our lives.

Sports can do these things, but they will only do this if coaches and parents hold athletes to high standards.

Thank you for reading.

Day 291: What Can You Do?

Daily Blog Challenge Day 291/365

I have spent a lot of time lately reflecting on how to make next softball season go better.  We all have our individual strengths and weaknesses and we all can offer many skills to those around us.

What Can You Do?

This is a question I am going to focus on during this next school year.

What can you do to help your class?
What can you do to help your school?
What can you do to help your classmates?
What can you do to help your coworkers?
What can you do to help your team?

I strongly believe that we all become better when we pull our strengths together.  We can all teach each other something.

Thank you for reading.

Day 275: Softball: Pre-Season Reflection Form (Material Monday)

Daily Blog Challenge Day 275/365

Material Monday

I have realized over the years that being reflective is easy for me. I have also realized the more I teach that this is not a given behavior for all people. I am trying to help instil this skill in my students and players. One way I hope to help teach this is to have them fill out a form at the beginning of the season. I have found it is much easier to be successful in any endeavor if I am focused and concrete about what I am working on and trying to accomplish. It is also important to look at the details because sometimes the big picture can become overwhelming.

AFC Lady Raider Pre-Season Reflection Form

What areas/skills do you feel are your strengths?

Why do you believe this? 

What areas/skills do you believe are weak?

Why do you believe this? 

What are you team goals for this season?

What do you believe we need to do in order to achieve these goals?

What are you individual goals for this season?

What do you believe you need to do in order to achieve these goals? 

Do you use written reflection forms as a teacher or a coach? I would love to hear about how you implement them into your program. Thank you for reading. 

Day 257: Being A Team

Daily Blog Challenge Day 257/365

One thing I noticed during this past softball season is that it is very easy to focus on your individual skills and get stuck on individual stats.  Often we become consumed with what we are doing or how we are doing that we do not look at how we can help our team.

In sports this means only worrying about my stats and what I am doing. It also tends to make individuals more judgmental towards what others are doing wrong.

In schools this means only worrying about my classroom and what projects I am doing.

It is often easier to think about ourselves as individuals. Progress is easier and many difficult situations are avoided. However, this is not where the most progress can be made. More importantly,  our students need to see us modeling team work and cooperation.

How do you make sure you are staying focused on building a team culture instead of focusing on individual achievements?

Thank you for reading.

Day 66: Remind 101 (Technology Tuesday)

Daily Blog Challenge Day 66/365

Technology Tuesday

One of my favorite apps is Remind 101.  I use it as a coach and it makes communicating with parents super easy!  If I had a band/choir that performed more, I can see this app being a wonderful tool to send out reminders to students/parents.

This summer I coached 7th/8th Grade Softball.  We rarely had practice, so I relied on texting to remind parents of games.  My phone only allows me to group text ten people, so I was forced to send out two texts every time.  Also, group texts use date instead of regular text messages, so I was always reaching my data limit on my phone.

This year when Boy's Basketball started, I setup a Boy's Basketball Group on Remind 101 (have the app on my phone and my iPad) and I included  the number for parents to join on all handouts for the first two weeks of practice.  My favorite thing about this app is that I can have up to 100 people in one group and it sends the message to all people in the group.  This way mom, dad and grandma/grandpa can sign up for the reminders and I don't have to send multiple messages.

I have heard of teachers who use this app to send out pictures from field trips.  There are endless ways to use this app.

How do you use Remind 101 in your classroom or while coaching?  Thank you for reading.