There are so many courses that I enjoyed that it is difficult to limit myself to three courses in this Master's Program.  Each course brought a fresh and unique perspective to my knowledge base.  Whether it was watching a movie about the cultural changes of an Indian family having to adapt to America, or reading about a middle aged man learn to play the piano, or learning and researching some of the intricacies and nuances of coaching and teaching minority children, every course gave me something that I will use as I move forward. However there are three courses that were highly influential. They include 1) KIN 857: Promoting Positive Youth Development through Sport by Dan Gould, 2) KIN 855 – Psychosocial Bases of Coaching Athletes by Andy Driska, and 3) EAD 860 – Concept of a Learning Society by Steven Weiland.

 

The first course I must discuss is KIN 857: Promoting Positive Youth Development through Sport by Dan Gould.  This course was about coaching which is a concept I was familiar with since I am an athlete. One of the core assignments of the course was reading the book Joe Ehrmann’s Inside Out: How Sports Can Transforms Lives. Although I wrote about the book extensively in the course, I can briefly discuss what Inside Out discussed in the readings.  The book explained the difference between a transformative coach and transactional coach.  The transactional coach only cared about winning and did not care about his or her athletes. The goal was to be a transformative coach.  Ehrmann argued that the best way for a transactional coach to become a transformative coach is to embrace the InsideOut coaching program. According to Ehrmann, there are five pillars of the InsideOut coaching program. The Inside Out approach means the coach must be willing to deal “honestly and effectively with what is inside in order to be purposeful and transformative when coaching young people.” In other words, one has to search inside oneself first before they can help coach someone else. Ehrmann discussed various ways that looking introspectively helped him to become a better teacher and coach. They included 1) turning his struggles into lessons that made him a coach who instills a sense of community, 2) trying to become a better classroom leader, 3) becoming a clearer and more empathetic communicator, 4) becoming  an advocate of more healthy and constructive  competition, and a 5) mentor who turns sports into a ceremony of celebration for young people. He was able to accomplish all of these five pillars by simply looking introspectively and asking some questions to himself about himself.

 

After reading this book and in the midst of taking the course, I was forced to self-evaluate my future goals and current practices. As I was reading this book, I kept thinking about how I could alter what I was doing personally to make a difference and create significant impact on positive youth development in sports.  In 2012, I started a foundation because I wanted to help youth men, especially those in the African American co­mmunity, to understand the importance of schooling and to embrace the concept of becoming leaders. There is a great deal of research that supports the notion that “young black male students have the worst grades, the lowest test scores, and the highest rates of all students in the country. When these young black men don’t succeed in school, they are much more likely to graduate from the nation’s criminal justice system into the penitentiary system.” (Ehrmann, 2011, p. 65)

 

We are trying to fight this epidemic with my foundation by holding sports camps and dealing with literacy programming to help promote critical thinking and reading in school. And while, we have been successful with our programming, after reading the InSide Out book, I demanded more from myself and my organization.  Therefore, I am going to put in place a component to my camps that focuses on coaches and mentoring coaches. Currently, the camps only offer programming for athletes but after reading the text, the camps are too limited. It is not enough that I know about the InsideOut approach but we should offer coaches the ability to have think tanks or round table discussions regarding these very important concepts of embracing a child and forming a trusting relationship with the youth without falling into transactional personalities.  Overall, the text influenced me to generate more ideas as to how I can effectuate change so that athletes will have better coaches that will help them to become better leaders and positive contributors to society.

 

This book was the foundation of the course even though the course captured mush more than just what this book taught me. The course showed me that true leadership must be harnessed and used on our youth in a manner is both constructive and positive. I am grateful that I had the opportunity to take this course and learn so much because now I know that when I coach I must make sure that I am dealing with my athletes on a personal level rather than simply emulating former coaches. I must use my gifts and talents to create student athletes that will be positive influences of society.  I must stay away from the transactional thinking of only being focused on winning as I coach.

 

KIN 855 – Psychosocial Bases of Coaching Athletes by Andy Driska

The second memorable course that I thoroughly enjoyed and allowed me to harness my skills as an athlete, thinker, and educator was KIN 855 – Psychosocial Bases of Coaching Athletes by Andy Driska. This class was designed primarily for coaches, or individuals who work directly with athletes. The class explored the sociological, psychological, philosophical, developmental, and instructional principles for coaching amateur athletes. The majority of assignments revolved around practical ways to implement this critical information in real life settings.  This was my favorite class of the Masters program.  The key concepts centered on  PETTLEP or Physical – Environmental – Task – Timing – Learning – Emotion – Perspective. However, the most striking part of the class for me was about imagery. We had several assignments that focused on imagery and how the use of imagery could help us prepare our athletes for the sport on gameday. This was useful as a tool for coaches and it was useful to me as an athlete. For example, I began using the technique of imagery to help evaluate techniques and to prepare myself for game day.  The use of imagery gave me a fresh perspective of the game and it excited me and allowed me to be more comfortable with playing the sport that I love. For example, it is easy to get regimented in the normal minutia of game day preparation and coaches and athletes only look at a set of predetermined principles. However, the course taught me that imagery allows evaluators to look at their sports with a new and different perspective.  It allows them to let their athletes conjure up the images of what a successful play would be and to be relaxed in the knowledge that he or she is fully capable of making the play. We would also be able to look at our personnel with fresh eyes because it gives us the confidence to play at a high level because players may have been prepared mentally so that they are not overwhelmed by the moment. I really enjoyed using imagery and I have continued to use this concept in my profession.

 

The final class I will discuss is EAD 860 – Concept of a Learning Society by Steven Weiland. I enjoyed this class because it challenged me and took me out of my comfort zone. We had several assignments and each assignment was striking in its own particular manner. Here I will discuss three assignments briefly which will illustrate the rich concepts of learning that I was introduced to in this course.

 

In this class we discussed the learning society and one of the assignments was reading William Powers, Hamlet’s Blackberry: A Practical Philosophy for Building a Good Life in the Digital Age. This book discussed the learning society. The learning society is a place where tension lies regarding the nature and direction of learning. The blend of formal and informal forms of learning within our modern day society has been a prominent theme in our understanding of the learning society. Formal and informal learning co-exist within the learning society with structured, moderately-structured, and unstructured types of learning. Additionally, people can access information online whether it is for personal, professional, or societal good. Also, we will be discussing several scenes in the context of the learning society.  The scenes of the learning society are at work, at home, away, in classrooms, and online.

 

He challenged the notion of whether the online community was necessary or beneficial. In terms of my professional experience, the online community is important and necessary. I was purposeful in taking an online course because I knew that with my career I would be unable to go to classes and yet I still wanted to learn the information. I would agree with the statement, "The challenge for our education system is to leverage the learning sciences and modern technology to create engaging, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for all learners that mirror students' daily lives and the reality of their future. . . .The opportunities [presented by students' out of school mastery of new media literacies] are limitless, borderless, and instantaneous."  In this view, online education is imagined as the inevitable and primary form of teaching and learning. The online learning is important and it allows people like me to have access to a world class and challenging education without having to worry about physical distance.  Hamlet's BlackBerry reflects the belief that it is the conditions in which people live and work that matter as much as what they may wish to learn. He argued people need a balance from the digital world for them to live healthy lives and he offers practical advice through a self-help continuum. I would agree that one needs to achieve a balance but to have a healthy and fruitful experience in the learning society. To me, I have a difficult and rigorous profession, both mentally and physically and the opportunity to read articles and view videos online adds reprieve and a certain amount of relaxation that makes me very grateful for the crowd.

 

The next assignment that I will discuss was reading Atul Gawande, Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance. He stressed that practicing ones craft is the key to being successful. However in addition to practice, Gawande has three core principles necessary for performance of work; 1) diligence, 2) doing the right thing, and 3) ingenuity.  Diligence, or necessity of giving sufficient attention to detail to avoid error and prevail against obstacles, is central to performance.  I found his thoughts are vital to learning at work for any profession. If workers were individually diligent, then companies would collectively get better. He gave an anecdote on harvesting information already within the hospital he was discussing. For example, management asked hospital workers their insight in small groups on eradicating hospital infection. The workers felt valued and gave insight which eliminated the high infection rate.  Next, Gawande argues a person should do the right thing, although sometimes the right thing is “unclear”. Therefore, he argues fighting for the best interest of the patient must be the primary focus. Finally, ingenuity is thinking anew. In other words, ingenuity is “deliberate, even obsessive, reflection on failure and a constant searching for new solutions.” He references cystic fibrosis patients and care centers emulating other hospitals. The successful hospitals have weekly conversations where they discuss each case and receive feedback. Therefore, they (along with the infection hospital) are integrating Atul’s performance into Byne’s and Smith’s learning at work through social human interaction in the workplace.

 

The last assignment that I will discuss in this class was reading Noah Adams, Piano Lessons: Music, Love, and True Adventures. He taught himself how to play piano as a middle-aged man. His learning concept was ideas self-directed learning. Adam’s piano learning represents the common desire for new knowledge and abilities no matter our age and our prospects for self-directed learning away from the workplace. I would argue self-directed learning is something we do daily and is a life-long process.  For example, in Adams book, he discussed in passing that as an adult he learned how to swim, he learned how to stop smoking,  and he learned how to run marathons, albeit slowly. His book resonated with me because I believe in order to be great in your profession you must be willing to be a lifelong learner regardless of your age.  

Each assignment was so different and helped give me various understanding of the concepts of learning. This class became the foundation that I drew from as I continued to take on the other courses in the Master’s program. For example, I use Atul’s Gawande’s approach on a daily basis of using checklist. It is such a simple concept but it has become vitally important because it helps me accomplish my goals in streamlined fashion on a daily basis. After this course concluded, I was  disappointed  because I had enjoyed learning so much about the concepts of learning and I know that my future students and future student-athletes are going to benefit greatly from what I learned in this course.

 

TAKE AWAYS

There are a number of key takeaways that I am going to draw on as I graduate from this Masters Program. The first takeaway is that I must be an active listener. Many of the readings discussed dealing with students and listening to what the student contributed in order to steer them in the appropriate direction. Without the ability to listen to my future students or student- athletes, then I would be doing them a great disservice. As I learned about all of the concepts of learning and the various ways to teach and deal with students from diverse backgrounds, I learned that I must be flexible in my approach. In other words, I cannot be rigid in my thinking. This refusal to be rigid and unmoving in my approach is a key takeaway for my future endeavors. Whether it is teaching a student history, teaching an athlete how to learn a football move, or teaching a coach how to evaluate film, I have to be willing to go outside the normal approach and really focus on my audience to determine how best they will be able to acquire my information. There is no one size fits  all rigid way of learning and so there must be no one size fits all way to teaching. That is a key takeaway and something that I didn’t fully grasp before taking this Masters Program. I foolishly thought that I was going to learn how to become a good teacher. Instead, I learned that I must harness my ability to recognize and learn how to deal with all different learning environments.

Additionally, another takeaway from this course was that I must be in continuous state of self-evaluation as I move forward as an evaluator. So many times, educators get disillusioned with the profession and they teach their own biased whether it be in the classroom or in sports. However, I do not want to be like that. Instead, I want to practice the concepts of being willing to introspectively make sure that I am teaching out of a pure heart so that my students are not being spoon fed from my own frustrations.  Finally, another key takeaway that I gathered is that I must be open to having networks that I am connected to within my field. There is  significant power in learning from others. Just as Noah Adams discussed self-directed learning and adult learning, I recognize that without having a strong network, I would not be giving myself the best opportunity to grow and I would not be helping my students or student athletes. It is through the discussion with colleagues that we are able to understand and better grow our own cognitive approach towards learning and teaching others.

 

All of these experiences in my Masters program have helped me to understand what I want to do and how I want to implement my plans. I know that with great privilege comes great responsibility. As a football player in the National Football League, I have been blessed financially and I want to help effectuate change in the youth of today, especially in underprivileged neighborhood. While I will likely need more experience and perhaps even more formal education, I plan on being an educator of youth, a football coach, and establishing a charter school in an underprivileged urban community. It is with great pride that I now know what my future plans are because I didn’t have the understanding before I took this Masters Program. This program gave me a clear understanding of what I wanted to do and it forced me to mature and  be realistic with what I could and should doing with my resources now and in the future with my nonprofit organization. So, while this is not part of the assignment, I simply must take the time to say Thank you. Thank you to my professors and to my fellow students for challenging me in the course chat rooms because without the professor’s guidance, course materials and assignments, I would not be the man that I am today. So my final takeaway is that I am simply grateful to have learned and been a part of such a rich learning experience.