Oftentimes, in my career as a teacher and coach, I made the opportunity to reflect with students on their work. While coaching, I check in with my players after every play, every practice, every game. During the check in, more commonly known as a huddle, I ask them how they think they played and how they can improve, as an individual, and how we can improve, as a team. Sometimes these quick check ins happen on the fly and sometimes directly after the game however the more poignant conversations about performance come a few days later. My coaching staff as well as myself need time to reflect on the game and watch film before we know what to improve on as a team and improvement for specific players or position groups. Players might right away tell you they were “money” or the transverse that they “sucked” immediately after a play or contest. After digesting and reflecting with the help of film sessions players often get a different perspective on their overall performance. It is after reviewing and reflecting we can make specific feedback suggestions with great conversations from our players to make them better. Players then can take that feedback and immediately head to the practice field and put those conversations to practice. This results in growth and improvement for the players and in the end the team. Feedback allows a coach to tell athletes how they are performing to coaches and team expectations. Coaches use that to instruct athletes to perform better (McGann, 2019).
We make daily time in practice to not only review film as a team but to break it down with quick meetings in position groups on success’ and deficiencies and meet with individual players on their performance. As far as time it takes as long as it needs too. Some days they can be exceptionally brief while other days we will far exceed the “10 minutes.” I feel like this translates strongly to the classroom, sometimes the most important lessons come from conversations derived from feedback analysis. It is one of my goals, as the athletic director for our district, to further train my coaches in this area. I have always believed that it is important for us, as the coach and mentor, to encourage a culture of reflection and growth. It has been my observation in recent years athletes put crazy expectations on themselves and often result in “I Can’t”, very dirty words for anyone, let alone student-athletes. I always ask my athletes, why do you need to practice your route running? Did you know how to do calculus before attending class? Or did you have to learn and practice it? Self-talk and reflection in athletes are huge in performance standards. Until coaches can deliver positive feedback and begin conversations in the positive most self-talk is negative (Quinn, 2020). How many times have we talked ourselves out of something that seems too hard or possibly make-up excuses for the wrong outcomes before we start something? Working with students is the same way if we do not provide planned feedback and promote positive growth minded reflection. How many of us have heard the student walk in and say, “I’m going to bomb this test,” or “my presentation is going to suck.” If that moment walking in the door was their only moment to reflect on what they’ve learned, then more than likely they are going to be correct.
Athletics are the same way, a great reflection of life and classroom. My critical thinking assignments in OTL547 has been centered around professional development for my coaches to assess and evaluate player performance. Using rubrics and quantitative data to evaluate player performance in training sessions, practices and games.
When I was a classroom teacher, I always made sure every lesson had a reflection component, whether that was an exit ticket, parking lot, gallery walk or just a simple thumbs-up. Reflective journaling at the end of a lesson or week was always a powerful tool. Many classes would end with a quick journal entry of where we were at the end of the period, what they had down, what questions they still might have. The next day would be a reflection piece in the same journal, did the muddy water clear on its own? Did it sink in with time to ruminate? Did the homework work out the kinks? Or by gosh do we need to recover something because everyone in class felt the same way? These strategies should be planned into every lesson or a reflection time given at least once per week to let the students self-realize where they are and where they need to be. By allowing students to reflect on their own learning educators can use it to guide lesson planning and classroom practices. Reflection can help students with recognizing what true mastery of the standards look like, make them self-aware of their learning, cultivate quality student to student and student to teacher relationships by creating dialogue and center the students thinking around learning (Eisenbach, 2016).
References:
Eisenbach, B. (2016, February). Student Reflection: A Tool for Growth and Development. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.amle.org/BrowsebyTopic/WhatsNew/WNDet/TabId/270/ArtMID/888/ArticleID/586/Student-Reflection-A-Tool-for-Growth-and-Development.aspx
McGann, R. (2019, May 23). Coach Feedback – How important is it? Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://metrifit.com/blog/coach-feedback-how-important-is-it/
Quinn, E. (2020, March 10). How Positive Self Talk Can Help You Win a Game in Sports. Retrieved June 10, 2020, from https://www.verywellfit.com/positive-self-talk-3120690
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