A Coach's Diary

Safer and more effective learning environments The qualities that make us most human - connection, community, positivity, belonging, and a sense of meaning The r eal, genuine, gratitude, appreciation, thanks, and love I get from building relationships with students fills my bucket Last night, an educator told me, 'Relationships are reciprocal." He then asked, "What do we as adults get out of building relationships with kids?" My life is built around teaching, coaching, leading and serving kids. A superintendent once told me, "In education, we are in the people development business." Our job is to teach, educate and develop people. Dr. Pedro A. Noguera, the Distinguished Professor of Education at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies and Faculty Director for the Center for the Transformation of Schools at UCLA asked , "What does it take to educate the students that you serve?" When I was asked what we get out of building relation...

The best coaches coach players, not Xs and Os. Don't be so focused on the plays that you ignore the quality of relationships with your athletes. The quality of the relationships that we have with our athletes is as important as anything we can do. They are more important than (almost) any play you can draw up or drill that you can teach. "Culture eats strategy for lunch." Positive relationships help even our best athletes reach their full potential under less stress because we, as humans, are hardwired for relationships and to connect with others. Some neuroscientists  even argue that our need to connect with others is even more basic than food and shelter and is the primary motivation of one’s behavior. At the core of positive relationships is trust. Caring is the way that we generate the trust that builds relationships (CRT and the Brain) . When we intentionally build trust and relationships,  our athletes will be more willing to put themselves ou...

A big part of coaching is our ability to connect with our athletes and their families. A quote that will stick with me is, "He made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as a learner." As coaches, we can easily change that quote to say, " My coach made me feel seen, heard, and cared for as an athlete, and as a person ." We are wired for connection. We all have different reasons for why we started playing and why we have stayed around the game, but at the foundation of sports is the human need to connect. Our brain's two main goals are to stay safe and be happy. We internally protect our self-worth, our self-determination, our well-being, and our connection to the community. To get our athletes to perform at their best for themselves and for the team, we need our athletes to feel like they are valued members of the team, and we do that by minimizing threats and maximizing well-being. Sometimes, one of the biggest threats to our athletes can be ourselves. We have all...

What Does It Take To Educate/Coach The Students/Athletes That You Serve? If we want to teach our kids, all of our kids, then we have to be able to answer that question. To answer it, we have to know something about them. We have to know how they learn, what they want to learn, what matters to them, and what their needs are. We can't assume that we know. We have to be active in getting to know them. And we can't pass that responsibility on to anybody else. We can't just pass it on to another coach or to someone who looks like them. We can and need to use others to help and as resources, but if we want to meet the needs of all of our kids, we have to be willing to grow as teachers and build real connections and relationships with our kids. The best teachers don't expect students to learn they way they teach. The best teachers teach the way that children learn. Think about how you build relationships with your students and how those connec...

Trust is the glue of life.  It's the most essential ingredient in effective communication.  It's the foundational principle that holds all relationships. - Stephen Covey I am currently reading  Hacking Leadership   by Joe Sanfelippo and Tony Sinanis.  These notes were taken from Hack 3 of their book,  Build Relationships. The best coaches are great at being deliberate and intentional when it comes to building relationships with their athletes, their families, the school, the community and everybody associated with the program.   When a new coach comes in, there is usually a honeymoon period.  The new voice is exciting and refreshing and everybody works to find favor with the new coach.  Great coaches use this time to build a solid foundation of where the program is going to go and they do that by starting with relationships.  It's easy for the new coach to build momentum, but it is much harder to sustain it.  To sustain...

"Locate a resilient kid and you will also find a caring adult - or several- who has guided him." -  Invincible Kids, U.S. News & World Report The key to achievement for students from poverty is in creating relationships.  Teachers and administration have always known that relationships, often referred to as 'politics,' make a great deal of difference - sometimes all of the difference - in what could or could not happen in a building.  In schools, we focus so much on achievement and effective teaching strategies, yet the most important part of learning seems to be related to the relationship. When a low performing student is asked how they made the journey, the answer 9 times out of 10 has to do with a relationship with someone who made a suggestion or took an interest in them as individuals. Covey uses the idea of an emotional bank account.  He indicates that in all relationships one makes deposits to and withdrawals from the other person i...