teaching
Here is my digitial curriculum project. Check it out and let me know what you think. If the code above doesn't work, click here for the direct link.
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Hey guys. The moment, is here, the moment you all have been waiting for. Myyy Appp Slaaamm! The tool I am telling you about is www.canva.com. Its so easy to use, and I am using it create pieces to put on my webpage and social media pages. Its a way to be more individualistic and unique, and also a way to brand and advertise yourself. Its really neat, I hope you enjoy my screen cast below. As I reflect back on the experience of this 20% project, I can tell that I have progressed as a CrossFit coach. I had hoped to be louder and more confident by watching myself on video, and to be more decisive in my corrections and explanations of the movements. I gave myself a self assessment in the beginning and here it is now that the experience is over. I placed my initial rating in parentheses and my current assessment after it.
Self Assessment: 1) Feeling comfortable running the warm up: (7) 9 2) Feeling comfortable going over Olympic weight lifting progressions: (5) 7 3) Feeling comfortable going over gymnastic and other progressions: (6) 7 4) Feeling comfortable giving athletes feedback: (6) 7 5) Feeling comfortable identifying movement problems: (5) 8 6) Feeling comfortable giving correcting cues: (4) 7 7) Checking in with all athletes before class starts: (3) 4 8) Feeling adequate connections with athletes in class: (4) 6 9) Feeling like I can “be myself” while coaching: (4) 5 10) Overall coaching confidence: (4) 7 It’s obvious that this experience has helped me improve in all areas of coaching and in increasing my overall confidence as a coach. My peer assessment is reflected in the fact that I have moved from being an apprentice to team coaching teen classes with another coach. From this experience I have gained a better eye for spotting mistakes. I feel that it has been much easier to spot movement mistakes, especially those that are crucial to an athlete’s safety. I also find that I have a cue, verbal or physical, in order to correct movement mistakes. I also have thought of a lot more movement analogies that have helped athletes correct their movements. I have found that many times I disregard my first instincts, which have turned out to help people or to be the same mistake the other coaches see. I think that having this instinct lets me see the movement errors early on, but my lack of confidence still holds me back. Although I have improved, I see that I still have much more improvement to make. I think that the more I do it, and the more I am around it, the better I will become at trusting my coaching instincts. Overall, I think that my conclusion is that this experience was a success in improving my skills as a coach. I feel that I have created momentum in my growth that will continue in my life even after this project. I am currently seeking greater coaching opportunities and hope to find ways to continue to progress and grow. The jerk is very different from both the clean and the snatch. There a few different kinds of jerks, including the split and squat jerk, but in this post I will be focusing on the push jerk. The set up for all jerks are the same. What differs between the different kinds of jerks is the foot and leg positions during the catch. The push jerk is the most simple of the foot and leg catching positions as it requires little variation and skill because it looks very much the same to the starting position of the jerk. The Rack PositionThe set up for the jerk is all about the rack position. The movement begins with the barbell placed across your shoulders, resting in the palms of your hands in the front rack position. You should have a full grip on the barbell; your elbows should be slightly in front of the bar. Heels should be placed directly underneath the hips with the toes facing forward, and weight of the body evenly distributed between the ball of the foot and the heel of both feet. Your abs and butt should be tight and flexed. This is the front rack position and the beginning of the lift. The LiftOnce, the front rack position has been established, the movement of the lift starts with a slight bend in the knees. This bend of the knees is more of an unlocking of the joint, which is unlike a normal squat. The knees move forward, while the hips stay in line with the shoulders and heels. The back should maintain a straight vertical and the abs should stay flexed and tight in order to support the back. The unlocking of the knees allows your body to perform a quick dip. This movement is fast and you should avoid resting in this “dip” position. It should only last as long as it takes to unlock the knees. Once the unlocking of the knees has been initiated, it is quickly followed by a jump upwards. The dip functions to generate power for this jump, so that you can more effectively move the load that is resting on your shoulders. As you engage your quads and your butt to drive yourself upwards, the weight will also be driven upwards. As you reach the top of your jump, the weight should continue to float upward, you should land your jump flat footed in a position with your knees bent. This landing position is called a re-dip, and allows your to get underneath the barbell as the weight moves up and becomes weightless. As you land in this re-dip position, you should simultaneously drive your arms upwards, creating a secure resting place for the barbell to land. Palms are facing upwards, arms are internally rotated so that the inside of your elbows should be facing directly upwards and the shoulders are away from the ears. This sequence of events is sometimes described as a “pull” underneath the barbell. When you land, you should be directly under the barbell, arms extended overhead, knees bent, and the hips might be slightly behind the frame of your body in a partial squat position. In order to finish the lift you must stand up straight with the weight overhead, showing control of the weight in that position. The jerk is often explained as a dip, drive, and re-dip. The function of this sequence of movements is to help the lifter get a heavy weight overhead by getting underneath it quickly by dipping underneath it to catch it. Movement AnalogyWhen you unlock your knees for the initial dip, imagine that your feet are on discs or plates that can rotate. Push your knees out as you dip and imagine that you are trying to rotate those discs outward with your feet. This will help to engage your glutes and keep your knees moving in a way that will help avoid injury by tracking over your toes. Also imagine that as you dip you are starting up against a wall. It is a similar motion as if you were scratching your back against a post. The movement is directly up and down, and does not involve a bending forward or backward of the upper body. You want to upper body to stay as upright as possible during the dip. Student Engagement
I try to get my students to work in groups, talk to each other, and get up out of their seats. I try to get them talking as much as possible. I can tell when students get really into a subject because they start talking, asking questions, and speaking out to the whole class in a discussion. When students are quiet and staring at me, I know something is going wrong. I can commit to being more passionate in my speaking about my subject. Science has its boring parts, like all the laws and equations and blah blah blah. But the exciting part is the meaning of it all. How discovering those laws changed everything. Or how the use of the equation allows us to perform a mysterious task. I can make an effort to talk more about the parts I’m passionate about to make my content more engaging. I can also commit to being human. Sometimes I am so overwhelmed in getting stuff done achieving task completion or a set goal that I forget to relax and enjoy the journey. The tense me is not very engaging, but I bet the relaxed me is a lot more engaging. I think I need to commit to understand the kids more. I have a hard time being patient with them, but I think the more I understand them as a demographic I will be able to relate to them and reach them in my lessons. Instagram ELE Challenge The students are using the internet to interact with another classroom in Spain so they are already interacting globally. Instagram is a way that they are connecting with a larger community outside of their classroom, and that community expands to whole world. These teachers are empowering collaboration through the use of hashtags and social media. By reviewing the hashtags, even if they don’t post, students can like and comment on others posts and they can view through a small window into another culture or another’s life. Instagram Scavenger Hunt I could totally see myself using this idea for the future. My only concern is for those students without the use of a phone. How do those students interact with this activity? I would like to use this for something in class. I worked in a classroom with ipads, so that would be something easy for all students to use. I would send the students outside the classroom to photograph something in nature or the purpose of a lesson and use the classroom hashtag. Each period could have their own hashtag and we could pull the pictures up on a projector to view them all and react to them together as a class. So I realize that my storify is not over a 2 week period, its just a single weekend. I wanted to share about something that had more of a theme, like a day in my life or an event in my life. So I chose a busy birthday weekend where I was juggling the important things in my life. During this program, I feel like every day is just a sequence of crazy events and somehow we keep going from one thing to the next. Weekend days are not any slower for me, especially Saturdays. I hope that my story conveys all the very different roles I play each day and how I have to quickly move from one to the next. One moment I'm a student, one moment I'm an athlete, one moment I'm a housewife, a daughter, a customer, a chef, etc. This happens all day, every day, and I think it can be a burden sometimes-exhausting. But its a really great part about being human that can be very fulfilling. Its not something that can be conveyed over a two week period. I think that sharing my story is important for me. I mean, its important for all people individually to share your story. Every story is worth sharing, and it gives one a sense of ownership and importance. You give yourself a voice when you share a story. Its a moment where you're saying to everyone, especially yourself, Hey, I'm important enough to listen to. I think story sharing also helps people build rapport; it helps us all relate to one another on some level. Sharing your own story is personal and vulnerable, it lets people in. As a teacher, you obviously need to have discretion, but sharing about yourself can help your students relate to you and feel like they can connect with you. You aren't just a teacher, but you can be a role model and a source of encouragement. Doing so online and in person can be influential on your students and your teaching style. When students can get online and read your story, or read things you have documented online, it helps them connect to you in a way that may be unreachable in person. Think about how we connect with celebrities and athletes; magazines are covered in stories about these people and it helps us feel like we know them. We care about them and the things going in their lives. It gives them an identity that we either like or dislike. As an educator, you're the same to your students. They can make that connect with you, if you document or brand yourself online and in person. A lot of that is what we are learning in this program, especially in this class. In a New Culture of Learning, it emphasizes how important the use of online venues to do this is important for your students. Connecting and be a part of collectives online is important for you and for them. Creating a blog or a story telling venue is something they can all be a part of. Chapter 7“Through play, the process of learning is no longer smooth and progressive. Instead, there is a gap between the knowledge one is given and the desired end result.” I chose this quote because it rings true with me. I learn most when I realized there is a discrepancy between what I know and what I am seeing in front of me or whatever is presented to me. It can be conceptual or physical, but the realizing that I lack some kind of information is the way that I learn something. The paragraph of this quote goes on to explain that this is how we organize information. I wouldn't always say that this happens through play, but play is one way in which we can realize the discrepancies in our understanding. Question: I really didn't understand the bit about “Making”. I don’t even know what question specifically I have, but the whole part about creating context was confusing to me and I didn’t quite grasp the meaning. Connection: I realize that project based learning is a way that we incorporate some of these strategies for learning. Knowing, making, and playing (or creativity) are all parts of executing a project. Many of the assignments we have in many of our classes, not just 530, allow us the ability to do some of these things. Working in groups is also an avenue for allowing this happen. That way we can play with classmates and share knowledge and ideas of making things. Epiphany: I realized that I learn through recognizing that I don’t know something or by recognizing that there is a descepency between what I know and some new concept presented to me, but it never occurred to me that play was a way to this. In my mind I separate play and learning, but it was interesting to see play as a way to learn. Chapter 8“When messing around, young people begin to take an interest in and focus on the workings and content of the technology and media themselves, tinkering exploring, and extending their understanding.” I chose this quote because this is where I linked the idea of the badges to the names. I see how the items build on each other and how hanging out is supposed to be like a passive participation, hanging out is moving to more of an active participation, and geeking out is like an active participation with a purpose. I see why our badges are named so and why they are given the certain “items” under them. Question: It seems that now-a-days geeking out can be something somewhat embarrassing. There can be those people who see those who “geek out” as being weird or obsessive or they roll their eyes at someone who gets passionate or expressive about what they are into in. My question is why? Connection: I think the phrase they used, “Learning to be”, is completely applicable to the purpose of this whole class. I see the purpose of this class as learning how to have an online presence. Its creating ourselves online in a new way and learning how to be present and alive through the internet. This concept is an important step for a generation that has not grown up online like the up and coming generation is. We have to make this step in our lives consciously, where the up and coming generation does not. This class is helping us to do that. Even though I feel like I already have an established social identity, I am still “learning to be” even more virtually literate. Epiphany: No an epiphany but something I thought was grasping was the way that play and agency were intertwined with hanging out, messing around, and geeking out. I could see how they linked to each other and how play and agency were ways in which you could hang out, mess around, or geek out. I thought that was cool. Chapter 9“The critical idea is that the two elements-of information and experimentation-are being brought together in a way that transforms them both. It is that fusion that declines the new culture of learning.” Reasoning-see connection.
Question: In order to create a new culture of learning where flux is a the only constant, how can we support a thing like tenure? I mean, that doesn’t exactly support change if the concept is to keep the environment and the dynamics the same. It seems to me, that even when I read the type of environment that is need to stimulate and teach this upcoming generation, it overwhelms me. When I have multiple social media pages to keep up with, it overwhelms me. But I am a transplant to this era, and the students that are growing up now are the natives. I think soon, they will be the teachers and leaders, and at that point, a new culture will be more easily embraced with less of the feelings of overwhelming. The teachers will be able to talk to and relate to students better. To support this new culture, does the whole system need to change? I hope so…I think it needs a change. Connection: The quote I picked is part of the connection that I made in this chapter. The purpose of the assignments in this class is to allow both of these two things to happen. They are trying to get us to experience this new culture of learning for ourselves so that we can incorporate it into our teaching. Not just so that we have cool new internet tools to use to connect to students. Epiphany: As the author went on about World of Warcraft, a game which I used to play constantly and no longer play for very purposeful reasons, I realized why I don’t like the playing of these games. I really don’t think that they translation of the skills and experience on the game are translatable to the rest of life. Who has been a person that engaged in all these wondrous experiences on WoW and how has it helped them be more successful in their lives? I have a family full of people that have spent countless hours playing this game, and I can honestly say not one of those people who I know intimately became a better person because of their experiences on WoW. In fact, I think they became less of a successful person in life while they were actively playing the game. I realized that’s why I don’t like those kinds of games, and I disagree with the author on this point. The clean is fundamentally very similar to the snatch. In the snatch the weight is held directly over head at the end of the movement, and this is not the case with the clean. In the clean the weight is not lifted over head; it does not exceed the height of the shoulders. The other main difference is that the grip width distance for the clean is much narrower compared to the snatch grip distance, directly under the shoulders. Otherwise the basic set up and movement from the ground to the upper body is basically the same. As is the case for the snatch, the clean can also be a power or a squat clean. Establish your clean width grip first. Obtain a grip on an empty barbell (no added weight) and stand with it so that it lays across your thighs. Your knuckles should be facing the floor. Then, keeping your grip on bar, perform a reverse curl in order to bring the bar to lie across your chest, and rest it on your shoulders. Your elbows should be pointing straight ahead of you. In this position, your hands should be just outside of your shoulders. Stick your thumbs out to touch your shoulder. The tip of your thumb should just barely touch your shoulder. Adjust your hand distance until this is the case. Notice where your hands are on the barbell. This is your clean grip width. The Set UpStart with the weight on the ground and start with a light weight if you are new to this movement. The set up is important to do correctly in order to establish safe a proper movement throughout the lift. Safety and accuracy start with a solid set up. Approaching the bar: It’s important to establish a routine for approaching the barbell. Every time you approach the barbell you should approach it in a similar manner. Here is a sequence of events that can be used for approaching the barbell for the snatch. 1) Walk up to barbell and place the bridge of your shoes (the last laces nearest your toes) directly under the bar. When you do this, that bridge of your shoes should be hidden from your view when you look straight down. 2) Feet should be hips distance apart so that your heels are directly underneath your hips. Toes should be facing forward, or if you are a little taller than most, your feet can be slightly turned out. 3) Bend down and establish a grip on the barbell using the predetermined grip width. 4) Knees should be bent, with shins rather straight. 5) Hips should be slightly above your knees. When you do this, your hamstrings and glutes should feel tight and engaged. 6) Shoulders should be slightly in front of the bar. Too far forward is not good, and behind the bar is also not good. 7) Arms should be straight and somewhat loose. They are not pulling on the bar to lift it from the ground, so keep them straight yet loose. 8) Abs should be tight to support your midsection. 9) Back should be tight and lats should be engaged pulling your shoulders back and down away from your ears. 10) Eyes should be looking either straight forward or slightly forward and down. **The last three points, 8, 9, and 10, are the most important part of the set up. This can also be cued as having a “flat back” or “neutral spine”. These cues help you set up a safe spine position, and this should be maintained throughout the entire movement. Not at any point throughout the movement is it acceptable to disengage your abs or your upper back. Doing so may lead to short or long term injury. If you find that you are disengaging these areas and your back is rounding as you pull or that its over extending as you catch, then lower the weight and practice keeping those muscle groups engage so that your back is protected. The LiftThis movement occurs in what are called three pulls that all happen consecutively and quickly to be one full movement moving the weight from the ground to catch it over head. First Pull: The first pull indicates the movement that gets the bar from the ground to just over your knees. To do this, you must first establish your set up position with a flat back position. Then while maintaining that flat back position, push down through your heels by engaging the quads and glutes. You should feel the bar leaving the ground. The only joint that should be changing position is your knees, which should slightly straighten. Your butt and your chest should be rising at the same time, meaning that the angle of your back should not change. Your hips should not rise before your chest. For this pull, your lats should be tightly engaged, pulling the barbell close to your body as you rise. The barbell should reach the top of your knees. This is the end of the first pull. Second Pull: The second pull starts with the barbell from the top of the knees to the hips. At the start of this pull, your shoulders should be slightly in front of the barbell, or directly above, and your back should be flat as it was when you started. Your knees should be slightly bent with the barbell just above the knee caps. The lats are engaged to pull the barbell close to your body. It should be close to your body if not touching it. Move the barbell up your thigh towards your hips by pivoting at the hips. Ensure that you maintain a tight midsection and keep the chest up. Your arms should be kept long and loose. Do not straighten the knees at this time. If your knees were a little too straight at the beginning of the pull so that you could get the barbell past your knees, they might even re-bend during at the beginning of this pull in order to get to a good power position for the third pull. Once your back is fully upright and the shoulders are directly over the bar the pull has ended. Third Pull: The third pull starts in the power position and ends with the barbell across the shoulders and chest in the receiving position. The power position is the barbell resting below your hip crease, back and chest are upright, shoulders directly over the bar, knees slightly bent. From the power position, the lifter squeezes the glutes tightly to open the hips fully while firing the quads to extend the knees straight. This movement is much like a jump and should propel the lifter and the barbell upwards. The lifter’s feet may leave the ground completely or just slightly roll the weight to the toes. Once the hips and knees are full extended, the shoulders should shrug upwards to continue the movement of the barbell upwards. Only now, and not at any previous time, the arms should start to bend, sending the elbows out to the sides, pulling on the barbell. As the lifter reaches the top of their jump the barbell should just start to become weightless. Before the barbell begins to descend, the lifter should feel themselves begin to descend. Bend the knees and whip the elbows around the bar so that when the barbell descends, it will land across the chest and shoulders. When you land your feet may have shifter to a wider stance. You should land with the weight in the heels, knees slightly bent, and the barbell across the chest. This is the end of the third pull. From here in order to make this movement a squat clean, the lifter should descended into a full squat while holding the barbell across the chest and shoulders. The hips will descend below the knees in order to make this a full squat clean. Without this movement, the lift would be considered a power clean. The last thing the lifter needs to do is to stand up fully before dropping the bar. Make sure that the hips, knees, and shoulders are all aligned to finish the movement before the weight is dropped. This is the clean. Movement AnalogyImagine you are standing up against a wall and you are not able to move side to side. You only have the option to move your body up and down by bending your knees. Now imagine that someone threw a Frisbee, and it is coming towards your face at a fast pace. How would you get your head low enough to dodge the Frisbee by only vertical movement? You would have to drop into a position with your knees bent, feet wide, and possibly even with butt low to the ground. This is the same kind of movement use for the landing position in the third pull. You have very few seconds to move from a fully extended position at the top of a jump to a receiving position with weight evenly distributed on your feet so that you can catch the weight. Chapter 4“Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and feed him as long as the fish supply holds out. But create a collective, and every man will learn how to feed himself for a lifetime.” I chose this quote because I think explained really well the idea of the new culture the authors are trying to convey. The idea that fish won’t be in constant supply probably never occurred to the person who originally said this famous line. The author uses this analogy to explain where their new idea of a collective will help people to learn and grow and thrive. Question: I understand that this a new culture that is being developed, but how is it being built on top of the previous culture? In order for an evolution to occur there should be a step by step process. I feel like there should be a blend of the old culture and the new culture, until the new culture is predominant and the old culture is extinct. They say in this chapter that learning comes from interactions with people, well does reading a text book come into play? Or an e-book? I learn very well from reading and less from people, because I am always stressed and confused in social situations. Reading is a place where my mind opens up and is free. Where does that fit into the new culture of learning? Connection: I see the way we are being taught in EDSS 530 as way of teaching us to participate in these various collectives and to use various 2.0 tools in order to connect our collectives and enhance them. I see it was being very valuable and interesting, if not overwhelming. Epiphany: No new epiphany. If anything I had a slew of questions of how we are just supposed to dump our old culture and adopt a new one. Why do these things have to be mutually exclusive? I would like to have a blend. Chapter 5“In the new culture of learning, the bad news is that we rarely reach any final answers.” Hold up. WHAT?! Isn’t this somewhat of a problem to anyone else? Maybe its just my “old world” mind talking, but I thought answers are important. If there is a problem, the answer is a called a solution. Some problems, need answers. Problems for the sake of learning, okay maybe not so much. But like, I ran out of food and I have 2 days until my paycheck comes through is a problem that needs a fairly immediate answer. The hope is that you don’t have that problem, but hey, in college, things happen. How does this new culture of learning prepare me for that problem. That seems like a gaping hole to me. Question: How does the new culture of learning prepare students to take on life? Learning in school and from the internet is all well and good, but does this theory of a new culture have an evidence of preparing students for the trials of life? Connection: I connected this to the collectives we have created on twitter and google+ for this class. These are ways for me as an individual to share, talk, and learn from other people who are in similar circumstances and similar interests as myself, and not just in the classroom. Tweetdeck is basically a list of collectives. Epiphany: In the beginning of the chapter when it was talking about the idea of public vs personal life and maybe we shouldn’t think of it in those terms to me was mind opening. It really got me thinking about the idea of real life collectives and virtual collectives I have been a part of and what my interactions with them were like. It has me wondering if my family is considered a collective? If I associate well with someone else’s family and become close with them are they another type of collective? It was a very interesting concept. Chapter 6“Every answer serves as a starting point, not an end point.” I chose this quote because I think the idea of inquiry, as only briefly mentioned in this chapter, is key to tacit learning. When a child touches the hot surface that the parents say not to touch, that learning doesn’t stop there. The experience does not stop there. The child starts asking themselves questions, and what they do with the new information is part of tacit learning, at least I think it is.
Question: How do you assess tacit learning? Connection: I don’t connect this to any of the actual classes I am taking, however I connected one part to my clinic practice experience. The “doing it wrong: comment about how a music teacher will see the students playing the piano wrong. I have a hard time with being a teacher and with clinical practice because I have a hard time seeing students “doing it wrong”. I don’t see things that way and I don’t feel that I know everything. I have a hard time assimilating into classroom culture because I feel that I am not the type of person that can be that type of figure in any sort of setting. I appreciated this point of view from the book because I think I could be a teacher in the a new culture of learning. But not in the present. Epiphany: The idea that tacit knowledge is absorbed through both mind and body was fascinating to me. I firmly believe that spirit mind, and body are so closely connected and intertwined that it is difficult for our minds to understand where one starts and the other begins. Putting this into context with learning makes so much sense to me although I had never thought that way before. And this knowledge is not transferable. I started this program thinking I had something to transfer to students and it was never my knowledge of science I wanted to transfer, but a passion for discovering it. Somehow though, it seems like school systems don’t actually want that. They say they want it, but they want it in “transferable” way and I don’t know how to be that. Chapter 1“The new Culture of learning actually comprises two elements. The first is a massive information network that provides almost unlimited access and resources to learn about anything. The second is a bounded and structured environment that allows for unlimited agency to build and experiment with things within those boundaries.” I chose this quote because it summed up the idea of a new culture of learning which is what the whole chapter is about. Question: I question what exactly the people in the World of Warcraft example were actually learning. Obviously there is a benefit to having family time on the internet, and you are learning about the people in your family, but what is the academic equivalent and how does it extent to real life? Connection: I connected the experience that was shared about teaching a class using Star Wars Galaxies in EDSS 5330. Students were doing a lot of connecting online outside of class in order to experiment and gain knowledge. That is what we are encouraged to do in this class. Epiphany: Honestly, I had no epiphany or aha moment. Although, my favorite part was learning about the eight/nine year old playing on Scratch. I found the description of that program to be very interesting and that is the kind of game I would want my own children to play, not something like World of Warcraft. I want my children to be themselves on the internet, not hide behind a character in a dream world. Chapter 2“…Schools have ceased to function efficiently; they are failing as a machine. If we change the vocabulary and consider schools as learning environments, however, it makes no sense to talk about them being broken because environments don’t break.” I chose this quote because I thought it was an interesting spin on the classroom and schools. The change in vocabulary brings a new light to something that seems rather dim and bleak, and I appreciated that. Question: Why is it not good for the culture to adapt? Shouldn’t it be always adapting if it is always changing? Would constant adaptation not be the same as always changing? Connection: I connected this idea of creating culture to the toys that are brought into the classroom for EDSS 530. It’s interesting to see the people who choose to get up and play with certain things. It’s interesting to see how people respond to certain toys. It’s the people and the toys and the reactions and the talking that create the culture. Epiphany: When the book said that individuals can choose to join cultures, but no individual can create one I realized that had never occurred to me before. Culture is a mass of interactions, and you need more than one person to create an interaction. Chapter 3“In a world of near-constant flux, play becomes a strategy for embracing change, rather than a way for growing out of it.” I chose this as a quote because it seems to sum up the point that the author is trying to make about the importance of play in the new culture of learning. Playing is a way of embracing change.
Question: What if play has multiple roles, and play is not necessarily the embracing of change but the avoidance of participating in change? I have seen many people use thrill, excitement, video games, and social lives as a way to avoid the pain that comes with change. Connection: I am connecting these concepts to the 20% project. I understand that it is not about what project we pick but it is about the process of learning. That is the important part of the project. Epiphany: I did not have any epiphany or aha moment, but I did like that the author used the quote from a greek philosopher about no man stepping into the same river twice. I think that quote is profound, and the use of it here conveys the meaning that the author was trying to make. At least it did for me. The snatch, either squat or power, is the trickiest of the Olympic weightlifting movements. The movement starts with the lifting pulling the weight from the floor, and ends with the weight directly overhead with arms locked out. Before you even start moving the bar, the first thing to establish is the grip width. You grip should be wider than your shoulders, and will depend on your height and stature. A good way to find your grip width is to stand with an empty barbell across your hips. Inch both of your hands along the barbell, away from your body until the barbell hits where a belt or pockets would be on your pants. This is your snatch grip width. Another way to find it is to hold the barbell in the same position across your hips. Bend over slightly hinging at your waist. The barbell should be sitting right at the point where your hips crease. Notice on the barbell where your hands are. There are markings on the knurling (the rough part) to help you measure and remember your grip width. The Set upStart with the weight on the ground and start with a light weight if you are new to this movement. The set up is important to do correctly in order to establish safe a proper movement throughout the lift. Safety and accuracy start with a solid set up. Approaching the bar: It’s important to establish a routine for approaching the barbell. Every time you approach the barbell you should approach it in a similar manner. Here is a sequence of events that can be used for approaching the barbell for the snatch. 1) Walk up to barbell and place the bridge of your shoes (the last laces nearest your toes) directly under the bar. When you do this, that bridge of your shoes should be hidden from your view when you look straight down. 2) Feet should be hips distance apart so that your heels are directly underneath your hips. Toes should be facing forward, or if you are a little taller than most, your feet can be slightly turned out. 3) Bend down and establish a grip on the barbell using the predetermined grip width. 4) Knees should be bent, with shins rather straight. 5) Hips should be either parallel with your knees or slightly above your knees. When you do this, you should feel your hamstrings and your glutes tight and engaged. 6) Shoulders should be directly above or slightly in front of the bar. Too far forward is not good, and behind the bar is also not good. 7) Arms should be straight and somewhat loose. They are not pulling on the bar to lift it from the ground, so keep them straight yet loose. 8) Abs should be tight to support your midsection. 9) Back should be tight and lats should be engaged pulling your shoulders back and down away from your ears. 10) Eyes should be looking either straight forward or slightly forward and down. The last three points, 8, 9, and 10, are the most important part of the set up. This can also be cued as having a “flat back” or “neutral spine”. These cues help you set up a safe spine position, and this should be maintained throughout the entire movement. Not at any point throughout the movement is it acceptable to disengage your abs or your upper back. Doing so may lead to short or long term injury. If you find that you are disengaging these areas and your back is rounding as you pull or that its over extending as you catch, then lower the weight and practice keeping those muscle groups engage so that your back is protected. The set up is not somewhere you want to hang out for a while. The faster you can establish a set up with the barbell the better. When you are bent down over the barbell you have a lot of muscles tight and active and it should be a tiring position to hold! Practice getting set up properly a few times if you feel uncomfortable with it. As soon you as you establish a brisk set up routine, move right into the lift. When you’re down there double check that you can wiggle your toes. This ensures that your weight is properly distributed in heels. The liftThis movement occurs in what are called three pulls that all happen consecutively and quickly to be one full movement moving the weight from the ground to catch it over head. First PullThe first pull indicates the movement that gets the bar from the ground to just over your knees. To do this, you must first establish your set up position with a flat back position. Then while maintaining that flat back position, push your weight through your heels by engaging the quads and glutes. You should feel the bar leaving the ground. The only joint that should be changing position is your knees, which should slightly straighten. Your butt and your chest should be rising at the same time, meaning that the angle of your back should not change. Your hips should not rise before your chest. For this pull, your lats should be tightly engaged, pulling the barbell close to your body as you rise. The barbell should reach the top of your knees. This is the end of the first pull. Second PullThe second pull starts with the barbell from the top of the knees to the hips. At the start of this pull, your shoulders should be slightly in front of the barbell, or directly above, and your back should be flat. Your knees should be slightly bent with the barbell just above the knee caps. The lats are engaged to pull the barbell close to your body. It should be close to your body if not touching it. Move the barbell up your thigh towards your hips by pivoting at the hips. Ensure that you maintain a tight midsection and keep the chest up. Your arms should be kept long and loose. Do not straighten the knees at this time. If your knees were a little too straight at the beginning of the pull so that you could get the barbell past your knees, they might even re-bend during this pull in order to get to a good power position for the third pull. Once the barbell reaches your hip crease the second pull has ended. Third PullThe third pull starts in the power position and ends with the lift landing underneath the barbell in the catching position. The power position is the barbell resting at your hip crease, back and chest are upright, shoulders directly over the bar, knees slightly bent. A common error occurs when a lifter does not reach this position by pulling too early with the arms in the second pull. Making sure that the barbell obtains this power position before pulling upward on the bar is important for having a powerful and efficient movement. From the power position, the lifter squeezes the glutes tightly to open the hips fully while firing the quads to extend the knees straight. This movement is much like a jump and should propel the lifter and the barbell upwards. The lifter’s feet may leave the ground completely or just slightly roll the weight to the toes. Once the hips and knees are full extended, the shoulders should shrug upwards to continue the movement of the barbell upwards. The arms should start to bend, sending the elbows out to the sides. The barbell should experience a moment of weightlessness at the top of the lifter’s jump. At that moment, the lifter will pull themselves under the bar so that the weight is directly overhead, and land the jump with knees bent and butt back. This is the squat position. The feet should have shifted to wider stance to accommodate the squat position. As the weight begins to fall back down towards the floor, the lifter should extend the arms with the inside of the elbows facing up and locked out and the armpits facing out. This should be a stable position to catch the barbell and is called the landing position. This is the end of the third pull. FinishThe last thing the lifter needs to do is to stand up fully before dropping the bar. Make sure that the hips, knees, and shoulders are all aligned to finish the movement. This is the squat snatch. The complete a power snatch, the lifter does not need to obtain a full squat position with the weight over head. The hips should be somewhere above the line of the knees to be considered a power snatch. To get a full squat snatch, the hips will need to descend to the height of the knees or below either after the catch or for the catch. The lifter cannot stand up with the weight before achieving the squat position. Once the lifter stands all the way up, the movement has ended. Movement AnalogyImagine that you’re standing on a trampoline, and the barbell is stationary. When you pull on the bar, imagine that it is not the thing that is moving but you are moving around the barbell. For the first pull, push your legs down through the floor like you were pushing them through the trampoline. On the third pull, when you pull your body under the bar, you’re not just dropping into a squat and letting gravity do the work, but you are pulling on the bar in order get underneath it. 1. Speaking, reading, writing, and listening-These basic skills are needed in order to be successful at any job or in college or in any relationship. Communication is everything. To be successful in life, a person needs all of these capabilities. 2. Mindfulness-in all areas of your life. Being mindful in like is the key to unlocking your reasons for doing things. Be mindful of what you eat, who you associate with, the financial choices you make, who it’s all affecting, etc. Being mindful is crucial to making good choices. 3. Emotional Literacy-How many issues could be made so much simpler if people could understand their own emotions and tell you about what they need. Every misunderstanding I have had at work, school, or in my personal life were because of someone’s emotional needs not being met and because they couldn't figure out how to get them met. This is essential for being successful. 4. Health Literacy-I have worked in the medical field as a medical biller and so few people understand health insurance much less their own health needs. How can we avoid things like cancer and other diseases? And when those health issues hit, how can I be an affective decision maker? These are essential skills that the majority of people lack. 5. Financial Literacy-how do you balance a check book or take a student loan? What do you need to keep in mind to buy a car? I have a brother in law who is 19 years old and as he graduated college he had zero of these skills and he realized he didn’t have them and wished he did. His parents don’t teach it to him, and he ended up taking out a really big car loan. Being able to manage your finances is important to long term success. 6. Delaying Gratification-Impulse control is one aspect of delaying gratification. And so is deciding on what to do and then waiting for a few days to make sure it’s not a momentary feeling. There has actually been research done to indicate that the ability to delay gratification makes you a more successful person. And you know, sometimes its not all about me and what I want. It is frequently about other people and what they want to. Delay gratification and think about the options. 7. Goal Setting and Achieving-Thinking and analyzing stuff is all good and well, but at some point action is needed to move forward. Setting goals and deciding how to execute is important. And actually having confidence to execute is important to success. So all of these things are related to issues that I have come across personally either because of my own lack of skills or other peoples. From life experience I have decided that if all people had these skills interacting with others might be much smoother. Things at work would go better, things in relationships would go better, I would have burned a lot less bridges, and I would probably be a lot more successful if I were better at all of these things. I think what Wagner is missing is a really good definition of what success is. Job success is only one aspect of life. College success also only one aspect. What about marital success? Or success with friends and family? What about what skills translate to being a good parent? Many people only work to provide for being able to partake in these other aspects of life with less stress. There are so many other skills I would have put into my list but these were the most foundational ones. I think that NGSS allows for a lot of Wagner’s survival skills to be implemented. In fact, I think that a lot of people have come to the same realization as Wagner and I think there is a lot of conceptual movement in the direction of emphasizing these survival skills. The problem with NGSS is that there is not a lot of definition for other people to start implementing it. What I would want to do is to actually start implementing NGSS into my lesson. When I plan for next year, I should start my planning with NGSS. I think that this will help implement these skills. I will measure my success by student success. If my students feel more college or job ready, then that would be a success. If my students are able to leave school with skills to help them in life, then I would consider that a success.
The first thing I am realizing about all Olympic weightlifting is that the most important thing is a seamless transfer of energy. I tend to think logically and scientifically about these processes, at the same time trying to hone in on my metacognition skills (see how I use teacher words). I’m trying to find patterns, similarities, and differences, I’m trying to evaluate which parts don’t make sense to me, I’m writing down a bunch of questions I have, and I’m trying to find ways to explain it to myself so that it makes more sense. Here is what I came up with:
All the readings I have gone through indicate that most important thing when lifting from the ground is keeping the item you are lifting (a barbell in this case) very close to body. Everything about the way you lift the barbell is for the purpose of keeping it close to the body, while avoiding injury of course. I understand that that concept must be true, but in order to understand it deeper I find myself asking why and how. Why is it that the movement requires the bar to stay close to the body? How did we come to determine that is the best way to lift? What is it about the movement that necessitates that? My conclusion comes from what mediocre knowledge I have of physics, all the way back from the college years. When you move your body around, that requires energy. Our bodies are constantly in a hurry to produce more energy so that we can contract muscles and continue to move around. When our bodies move in a way that contradicts the forces of gravity, such as picking something off of the ground, it requires force in an opposite direction of the force of gravity. The force of gravity pulls us or an item straight down to the ground in a straight line. One way to oppose this force is to pull yourself or an item in a straight line away from the ground, as straight as possible to oppose that force. The problem is that human bodies don’t maintain a straight line position all the time. If we are doing these Olympic lifts, or any other kind of lift from the floor, in order for us to reach the object on the floor from a standing position, we have to bend over. Bending over requires the knees, butt, and shoulders to move out of alignment with the body. This can be done in many ways, some of which may cause us to be more prone to injury and others will be much safer ways of doing so. The good thing is that when we are bent down, it is not a resting position, we are like a coiled spring waiting to be released. When we are bent down, some of our muscles must contract and use energy to create this position. This causes the body to have energy stored in the muscles in the form of potential energy. So there you are, bent down over an item to pick up with all this stored up potential energy. You can’t stay that way, so what do you do. Well, if the item is heavy, you have a natural instinct to move in a way that helps you transfer some of that stored energy into item in order to create movement. If it’s an inanimate object like a barbell, it doesn’t have its own energy to create motion like you do. So you have to transfer some of your energy to the object in order to make it move. You do this with forces. The forces start in your feet, your heels to be more specific, as you begin to stand up. Your hamstrings fire, your glutes fire, the quads and calves fire, all to release that potential energy to kinetic energy. And that barbell is essentially strapped to you by your arms. The arms should be loose and not contracted, as at this point in the movement, they are not creating or transferring energy, they are the straps between your body and the object. As you start to stand more upright, the energy in your body is transferred from heels to knees to hips to shoulders, and finally you bend the arms and transfer the energy to the barbell. The arms need to be directly under the shoulders at this point in order for the transfer of energy to occur efficiently. If the arms are not vertically under the shoulders, when the energy reaches my shoulders, it has nowhere else to go. Unless my arms are directly under my shoulders, then I can shrug my shoulder upwards, which moves my arms upwards transferring that kinetic energy to the arms. At this point, the bending of the arms transfers that energy directly to the barbell moving the barbell upwards. Then you just have to finish the move by catching the weight of the barbell for whichever move you are doing. The force is not rotational, it is not broad. It is a very narrow (no bigger than the frame of the base/feet) line of force, directly vertical, so the object needs to be within that vertical line (frame of the base) in order for the force to act upon it. The closer it is, the more efficient that movement is, and that’s just physics. As I embark on completing my 20 % project to become a better CrossFit coach, I need to complete a pre-self-assessment of my coaching abilities. I will use 10 point scale where 1 means that I have little or no abilities in an given area, and 10 means I am as good I as possibly be in that area at this time. I will also include a pre-peer-assessment, which is basically the coaching direction that has come from the owners of the gym that I coach at. At the end of the project I will self-assess and I will include an assessment from the same owners at my gym. This is a little background on how I came up with the points on the self assessment. Before I started coaching, the one of the head coaches, who is also one of the owners, at my gym spent time with me over a few days to explain the standards of coaching at the gym. At the gym, the focus is on providing a place where people enjoy coming to every day; doing CrossFit should be the best part of their day. Part of that is great coaching, and the other part of that is upholding the community aspect of the gym. As a coach, I need to be able to be great at protecting each athlete by ensuring they are moving properly and that they are avoiding any movement that may cause injury. This involves scaling workouts to fit each person’s physical needs so that they feel like they are getting a good workout without feeling like the workout was too hard to accomplish. Each athlete should feel like they are progressing and improving. I also need to be connecting with athletes on a personal level. Asking each athlete how they are and checking in with them is an important part of building that rapport that is needed to coach them and to help them feel like I have their best interest in mind during the workout. This will also help me feel like I am coaching friends rather than strangers, which will help me feel more at ease and confident. The points that I created below to assess myself on are based on the things that I worked on with the head coach at my gym. These are points that are important to being a good coach. Self Assessment: 1) Feeling comfortable running the warm up: 7 2) Feeling comfortable going over Olympic weight lifting progressions: 5 3) Feeling comfortable going over gymnastic and other progressions: 6 4) Feeling comfortable talking giving athletes feedback: 6 5) Feeling comfortable identifying movement problems: 5 6) Feeling comfortable giving correcting cues: 4 7) Checking in with all athletes before class starts: 3 8) Feeling adequate connections with athletes in class: 4 9) Feeling like I can “be myself” while coaching: 4 10) Overall coaching confidence: 4 Peer assessment: The awesome part about this coaching experience is getting good critiquing and feeling so supported at the same time. It makes working on weaknesses feel comfortable and helps me feel motivated to work on them. The feedback I have received from two of the owners/head coaches is that I need to be louder and that I need to have better overall confidence when directing a class. I should be definitive and decisive about what we are doing.
My hope is that through this 20 % project, I am improving my ability to explain and correct the more complex movements of CrossFit, the clean, jerk, and snatch, that I will feel more overall confidence that will translate into definitive and decisive speaking when I run a class. I also feel like I am being loud, but I think my opinion might change when I see a video of myself going over the progressions for the lifts. I am hoping that a video of myself will help me identify and understand more of what I can do to change and improve. I am confident that with practice and familiarity I will become a better CrossFit coach. The connection between motivation and the way Wagner discusses the way students today, is that students today need a different kind of motivation than what they needed before. It seems as though adults now aren't realizing the effects that the internet and other advanced technologies are having on society as a whole. Raising a generation that has known nothing but the use of advanced technology has changed the way they read, talk, take in information, learn, and relax. The tactics that were used a few short years ago to motivate students and to get them jobs is not what is working for the latest up and coming generation.
I think that there is some truth to what Wagner suggests and points out, however, I don’t think that it’s as severe as he portrays it. I think that the needs of the upcoming generations are different and there will be shift in society because of the latest technological inventions. Teenage needs have always been unique and shifting with the tides of the latest trends. When I was a teenager, I begged for my own phone line and a tongue piercing. I would find a way to page my boyfriend so he could call me in the middle of the night to talk. I had a need to be connected with friends and validated through social actions. Are the teenage needs different, or are they manifested differently? I wonder though, if technology has caused a change on the up and coming generation, or if technology has had an influence on the adults of this time. It is the adults who are raising the kids that have a perceived bad work ethic, and it is the adults who are letting their children spend time playing video games. The kids are not who are making the choices, I think that should be some focus on the adults. A bad work ethic is a bad work ethic. I have been to High Tech High and I have already started looking into working there. I love that they provide autonomy to teachers to teach how they want and that they have a priority on project based learning. I have had the chance to attend a class at High Tech High and interview the teacher about their lesson design and what a “normal day” is like. It seems like a great place and as far as the options out there, it is on the edge of innovation. I have wondered recently why students spend so much time in class. One of the big eye opening changes for me what I went to college was how much spare time I had. It made me realize how outrageous it was that I spent so much time at school. It was an amazing feeling to make my own schedule each semester, and that I could make it work around a job and what worked best for me. If I wanted early morning classes I could take all early morning and be done by 10 am every day. If I needed afternoon classes I could have afternoon classes and sleep in. I had so much power over my schedule and I was mad that I wasted so much of my adolescence in high school. I was self motivated, self directed and responsible and I wish I would have had more autonomy as a teenager with parental supervision before getting to college. I see that in many students that were in my clinical practice. Why can’t a high school function a little more like college, and let students pick what classes they want to take and don’t make them take 8 hours of it every day. I believe that the more control they have of their life, the more engaged they will be. And I also believe that parents should rightfully be very involved with a student’s decision making and schedule making. If I were to make a school, or make a change to schools, that would be my first act. How to get a Job at Google.
100% I agree. And no, I don’t think that what I did in clinical practice would help my students get a job at Google. I love at the end when he says that just because you have a degree doesn’t mean anything, but what does mean something is that what you can do with the knowledge you have. Google seems to have some great ways to assess these abilities about people. What I see happening at the public school level, is that these abilities are not being assessed therefore the abilities are not being taught. And it seems that there is a lot of confusion about how to assess these abilities at the public school level. If there are tried and true measures to assess people on their abilities to lead, relinquish lead, learn on the fly, step in and problem solve, etc then why are the not being used in schools? On the flip side, I know that not everyone wants to work at Google. So if Google is looking for certain attributes in people, can the claim be made that all employers are looking for similar attributes in employees? As a science minded person, I would say that there needs to be more research in order to say that if students are prepared to interview and be hired at Google, that they are prepared to be hired anywhere, or even further that they will be successful in any job. I don’t think that after reading this article that this is necessarily the case. Overall, my gut agrees 100% with this claim, but the logical thinker in my says more information is still before I would use this info to change anything. Read the article here.
I often wish the same thing that this coach does, to shadow my students to get an idea of what their day is like. I also reflect often on my time as a student and what my struggles were and how they affected my attitude about school. Currently, I have no school assignment, but my most recent experience with San Marcos High School was eye opening. I got a chance to assist in classrooms with students who were in my Co-Teaching classrooms. Some of my EL students were in an ELD English class that I was also in. Their attitudes and behaviors were vastly different than when in my general ed science class. In the EL environment in the first period of the day, they practically jumped out of their chairs to volunteer to read out loud or offer their thoughts and opinions. They joked with each other and would carry on about things that mattered to them like dating, jobs, and sports. In science they acted bored, tired, and disinterested. They shied away from speaking out loud or even asking questions when they needed to. It was difficult for me to determine whether the difference in behaviors was due to instructional strategies, environment, language barriers, time of day, or lack of interest in the topics. My co-teacher insisted it was a language barrier that caused a discomfort in her larger class, mostly situational and nothing to do with instructional strategies. I’m still not totally sure. I think its hard to capture what your students are really like by only seeing them for one hour, for one subject. However, I was enlightened by the key take aways of this article. I was surprised that the students hardly spoke in any of their classes and that was considered typical. This article aligns with my beliefs that students need to be in charge of their learning. Students are used to dialing in school. And as torturous as it is, they are used to sitting, listening, and doing as their told in order to avoid notice or reprimand. I believe students should be actively engaged in their learning and they should be making choices about what and how they learn. Through a co-teaching day, I often find myself thinking thoughts like “Well who can blame them for talking…being on their phone…falling asleep…not completing the assignment…” I feel bad for students often and I have hard time reprimanding them for the things that I completely understand. So far, I have not seen anyone present a better way to do it. And although I think the suggestions in this article are spot on, I still have yet to see what it looks like to bundle them all together and create an awesome classroom environment. I have my doubts that it is possible in the current climate of education. After reviewing my 20% project, I would like to refine the process a little more. My ultimate goal and purpose is to become a better CrossFit coach. The reason I want to do this is because I love CrossFit and I especially love Olympic Lifting. Its something that you are never done learning about or refining. The reason I keep going back to the gym is to get better and improve. After doing my own workouts for a while, the next step for me to become better at CrossFit is to understand the other side of the CrossFit experience-the coaching and programming. The hours I spend at the gym are the best hours of my day. When I walk into my box, I feel accepted, welcomed, celebrated, supported…I could go on but I think you get it. I could hang out in the gym all day talking about lifting and CrossFit, so I eventually decided I wanted to coach so that I could expand my understanding and take the next step into committing to CrossFit. Now that I have done officially what I needed to do to become a coach, that is taking the CrossFit Level 1 course, I want to become better. I want to move from being the noob assistant coach to being a valuable asset to the box that allows other people to enjoy their time in there as much as I do. I eat, sleep, breath CrossFit all day, every day and I want to contribute to the awesome community that I love so much.
So now that the passion and the reasons are out of the way, how am I going to become a better coach? I am going to write three blog posts about each of the 3 main Olympic lifts-snatch, clean, and jerk. As a coach these are the most technical movements that are the most difficult to coach. For each blog post I will create a video of myself demoing and explaining the progression of each movement. In my blog post I will delineate the movements and create a method for explaining. Each will include a step by step sequence of how to successfully complete each lift. Each post will include an analogous way to explain the movements, such as “imagine you are on a trampoline the bar is stationary. Imagine that you are trying to push your legs down on the trampoline as far as you can while hanging onto the bar.” Before and after each blog I will rate myself with how comfortable I feel with explaining each lift. A “failure” would be if my score after completing this project is the same as the score before. I will use 10 point scale where 1 is not at all comfortable explaining the lifts verbally in coaching session, 10 being I am the best I am ever going to be at explaining the lifts verbally. Summary of requirements: 1. Before I start, rate my ability to explain each of the three lifts. 2. Write three blogs posts for each of the Olympic lifts-snatch, clean, and jerk, that includes the following: a. Technique Video b. Step by step sequence of how to complete each movement beginning to end c. Movement Analogy 3. After the blogs are completed, rate my ability to explain each of the three lifts. It will require creativity for me to create the blog posts, create videos, and come up with creative analogies to help explain the movements. The way I will prepare to complete each blog is by reading material, watching videos that others have made, and seeking help from other coaches in my box. Here are the questions I would like to learn about: 1. In a snatch, how do you avoid the barbell hitting your hips? 2. Is there a way to avoid the barbell hitting your collar bones in a clean? 3. How do you determine the proper feet placement for a jerk landing? 4. For the set up of a snatch, should your shoulders be in front of, above, or behind the barbell? 5. What is a good way to explain (maybe with an analogy) how to lift the barbell off the group for both the clean and snatch? 6. I s there an appropriate weight/reps ratio to use for workouts? 7. How do you know how much detail to go into when explaining the movements to a class that varies in different athletic abilities? 8. How can I edit a video on my Lonovo computer? I know that a Mac has imovie but does Windows have an equivalent? 9. How is the set up for a clean and snatch different than the set up for the dead lift? 10. How does the re-dip of the knees on the second pull of the clean important for the movement of the bar?
Martin suggested that I use this technique to help me with my 20% project. However, as I researched this project I realized that I wish I had known this technique in college, it would have made some classes much easier. And then I realized the best study tools I used in college involved using similar strategies to remember and retain information. I would get together with other classmates and we would talk about class content. I felt most prepared for a test after I felt like I could clearly articulate a topic to a classmate. Being able to tell someone else in words about a topic, for me either verbally or written down, helps me learn more about that topic. I feel more familiar with it than if I had just thought about it conceptually. This is not only a technique that I can use for myself and my own learning but also in my classroom as a teacher. I could incorporate activities that involve students teaching other students about the content in order to help students understand it better. Creating something like an infograph would also be a way for students to verbalize and organize information in a such a way that will help them remember it better. Thanks Martin! As I was researching about coaching for my 20 % project, I watched this video that reminded me a lot about the principles of teaching. This video is what convinced me to do my 20% project on coaching because enhancing my coaching skills will enhance my teaching skills as well. The points about meetings your students or clients where they are at. To do this you have to first do an assessment of their knowledge. Then you have to break down the information for students in bite sized pieces. Everything that makes a good coach will transition to making a good teacher.
For my 20% project I want to learn how to become a better CrossFit coach. I took my level 1 cert in November year and I have slowly been trying to make the transition from noob coach to actually professionally paid coach, and it hasn't gone over so well. What I want to spend more time on is creating my own way of understanding and verbalizing information specifically about Olympic weight lifting. I need to wrap my brain around it better, and come up with some acronyms or main points that are original to use when I coach. I need to find some way to launch my mediocre-average coaching skills to being a great coaching skills. I think that overcoming the road block lies in creating my own understanding in some way, and then receiving validation for it, and then verbalizing it someway that I feel comfortable.
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AuthorI teach. I CrossFit. I like to talk about both! Archives
May 2015
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