I love sports. I love football. I love everything about the game: the
preparation, the scouting, the practice, absolutely everything. I hope
one day to get into coaching ball at some level as well as teach. As I
was reading the article all I could think about were the similarities
between teaching and coaching. The ability to convey knowledge and
information for a diverse group of learners; each learning in their own
way! As a coach, your goal is to prepare your players in such a way that
when the lights come on, they are able to function independently of you
yelling in their ear and telling them what to do for every single
thing! Likewise, as teachers our goal is to help mold students into
independent and productive human beings. For this course specifically,
into independent readers.
The manner in which we do
this can vary. In order to encourage higher order thinking and problem
solving we can ask questions that spark past knowledge about word
recognition like the teacher did at the beginning of the article. One of
the hardest things as a teacher is wait time. Giving the student ample
time to struggle through hard concepts while also maintaining a healthy
learning environment. This is absolutely critical in the students long
term potential as a learner and thankfully as teachers, or coaches, we
have an incredible opportunity to take part in this process!
I loved how you connected coaching reading to coaching sports. And I agree completely with you when you say that the hardest thing to do as a teacher is wait and watch the student struggle through hard concepts. I know this will be one of my biggest struggles as a teacher.
ReplyDeleteI, too, like the connection you provided between teaching and coaching, very nice. I also like how you pointed out that its our goal to help mold students into independent human beings. I think that is sometimes overlooked, and students are sometimes grouped together and taught everything the same way, rather than molded and taught uniquely and individually.
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