I have been a school coach for 22 years (middle school, high school 9th grade, JV and varsity boys (current) and varsity girls) and an AAU travel team basketball coach for 7 years, took a break and now the past 4 years. Having read and heard many arguments about the problems and issues with travel sports in general and AAU basketball specifically, I felt the need to respond and make a case for travel basketball.
I have coached a niece and a daughter in girls travel basketball. They both LOVE the game, began playing AAU at age 10, my niece played 4 years of college basketball, my daughter is just entering high school.
Point number 1: Kids play AAU because they have no school peers that love the game like they do. In AAU, they find kindred souls, kids that love the game like they do, will come over and play one on one with them, will discuss the virtues of Paul George vs Kyrie Irving with them, will text/insta/snap pix of their cool new basketball shoes with them.
Point number 2: Kids play AAU because they have no (few) peers that WANT to play like they do. Their school peers want to play but not practice, they want to have fun but not compete, they want to be social but not embed themselves in the game(s).
Point number 3: Kids play AAU because they have fun playing "real" basketball and not the version that must be played in school ball where all kids have to be included. This is especially true in girls basketball. I was a girls varsity coach who ran the kids camps and scrimmages. There could be no stealing, there could be no double teaming, they had to play man to man. If there were anything else, the games would have been very ugly and a good player would dominate the game with layups (more than they do already)
Point number 4: Kids play AAU because they get coached like they are older. One of the greatest compliments I ever got was when a parent from my 6th grade girls AAU team saw my varsity boys team play and commented to my wife: " He coaches the boys just like he coaches the 6th grade girls!". Not that a coach should treat 6th grade girls like varsity boys but they can be coached in very much the same way. They can be taught to look up the floor, pass ahead, eye the rim, cut hard, get in a stance, etc, etc.
Point number 5: Parents have their kids play AAU because they recognize their child's love of the game and want them to explore that love in depth. My son did not play AAU basketball. He was an All-Conference basketball player as a senior but he was by no means a superstar. His passion was golf. My daughter has a passion for basketball, she watches it on TV, knows the NBA, WNBA and college men's and women's teams and players.
Point number 6: Kids that play AAU will improve because they are playing against much better competition than they can get in their own neck of the woods. I tell parents all the time: "If your son/daughter is the best player on the block, it is time to find a bigger block". That is; if your child is the best in his/her grade, make them play up, if they are the best in the town at their age, they need to get out and play other kids from other towns, if they are the best in the state, they need to get out to other states and play the best from those states. This is how a child improves. Beating up on your classmates does not make you better or more humble but getting beat by a kid from a neighboring town does.
Counterpoint 1: "Kids get poor coaching in AAU": This is sometimes true but is it worse than the coaching they are getting from the dad coaching the 6th grade YMCA team? There are poor coaches at every level. It is up to the parent to recognize that fact and either become a coach themselves or find a different team to play on.
Counterpoint 2: "AAU clubs and people who run tournaments are just out for your money." TRUE! Why wouldn't they be? They are providing a very valuable service at some cost to themselves. Should they NOT try to make money doing that? To say so would be un-American! The laws of supply and demand are still at work here. A parent does not HAVE to shell out thousands of dollars to have their kids travel. A parent does not HAVE to pay the entry fee to a tournament, they can drop their child off, wait in the parking lot for them to be done and bring them home (some coaches would probably pay for them to do that :)
Counterpoint 3: "AAU basketball (and other sports) force kids to specialize too young" . Kids are not "forced to specialize" by anyone but themselves or their parents. My son was a 2 sport athlete who played golf and basketball (he golfed whenever there was no snow) . My daughter will be a 3 sport athlete. She will play volleyball but she will not play on a travel team. We have chosen to only travel with one sport. This does not mean she has specialized but that she is spending more time on her FAVORITE sport (which happens to be the one requiring the most skill). She will continue to play basketball during volleyball season and track season. Is this specializing? If so, then the definition needs to be tweaked to say "if you play a sport year round, then you are a specialist."
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Monday, March 2, 2015
Flashblog
Most interesting lesson is always the classification lesson called "fear factor". I buy a bunch of interesting foods like crickets, larvae, scorpion suckers, portobello, sardines, etc. Along with "regular" foods. Put them in bags and give students classification of all of them. No real names. They choose to play and then if they play, i pick one at random for each player. They only earn points for eating the whole thing. Highly entertaining and they never forget that dandelions are in salads ;)
Wednesday, June 18, 2014
Flipping v lecture
I began this post about one year ago. I have not posted in quite some time due to many things. I am beginning again I am leaving the part I began as it is and am editing after in italics
Flipping the classroom is all the rage right now and Iam was fully on the bandwagon. I have this niggling fear that many of us in the teaching profession are going too far with this idea. I have tried fully flipping and although (as I posted earlier) there are many benefits to doing it, after a couple of years I feel like I am losing the very thing that makes me a quality teacher. You cannot be personal on a video. You can tell stories but videos are really all about information. I am a story teller. I love to teach (lecture, discuss) biology with stories about my life, life in our town, their lives and things I have learned. This is extraordinarily difficult to do in a ten minute video. When you lecture, you are delivering a message with words, powerpoint, images and video clips. You are in the moment, engaged with students in an adventure of learning.
"Sage on the stage" is the derogatory phrase often used for a "lecturer". However, I can really remember things I learned from great teachers who lectured. True, not every kid may be "engaged" in my lecture, but not every kid is "engaged" when I give them group work to do either. NO KID "engages" all the time. I don't "engage" all the time in meetings etc. It is human to disengage and reengage. It is up to the leader to keep a person "engaged".
One phenomenon I have found interesting is how the very people who preach against lecture espouse using things like Ted videos for learning. Wait a minute...isn't that a VIDEO OF A LECTURE? That is interesting. So, I (the person they see every day, the person who taught their siblings, the person who hugged them when they were down, the person who laughs at their dumb jokes, the person who has met their parents) should not lecture them but an anonymous scientist from some far off land should? This is not to say that TED lectures are bad to do in class, far from it. Neither are Khan academy videos or any other means to bring the outside world in. They just should not be the be all and end all.
I have come to the conclusion that if I cannot make an interesting lecture out of a topic, then students should watch a video. If it is facts I want them to know, a video is a good way to do it. If it is a topic that requires thought, is interesting to talk about, and can be fun to discuss, the lecture/discussion should take place live.
Over the years as I incorporate lectures back into my classroom, my students ask for them more and more. They don't really say why but I believe it is because lectures stimulate thinking and the "Why" questions pop up. They want me to be the leader in the classroom, they don't want to have to look up every factoid in google, they want to hear interesting stories and laugh out loud. They want to know why things work the way they do not from "howstuffworks.com" but from me.
If you read my previous posts, I went into flipping with all I had. There are MANY good reasons to do it. I am not sure that LEARNING is one of them anymore.
Flipping the classroom is all the rage right now and I
"Sage on the stage" is the derogatory phrase often used for a "lecturer". However, I can really remember things I learned from great teachers who lectured. True, not every kid may be "engaged" in my lecture, but not every kid is "engaged" when I give them group work to do either. NO KID "engages" all the time. I don't "engage" all the time in meetings etc. It is human to disengage and reengage. It is up to the leader to keep a person "engaged".
One phenomenon I have found interesting is how the very people who preach against lecture espouse using things like Ted videos for learning. Wait a minute...isn't that a VIDEO OF A LECTURE? That is interesting. So, I (the person they see every day, the person who taught their siblings, the person who hugged them when they were down, the person who laughs at their dumb jokes, the person who has met their parents) should not lecture them but an anonymous scientist from some far off land should? This is not to say that TED lectures are bad to do in class, far from it. Neither are Khan academy videos or any other means to bring the outside world in. They just should not be the be all and end all.
I have come to the conclusion that if I cannot make an interesting lecture out of a topic, then students should watch a video. If it is facts I want them to know, a video is a good way to do it. If it is a topic that requires thought, is interesting to talk about, and can be fun to discuss, the lecture/discussion should take place live.
Over the years as I incorporate lectures back into my classroom, my students ask for them more and more. They don't really say why but I believe it is because lectures stimulate thinking and the "Why" questions pop up. They want me to be the leader in the classroom, they don't want to have to look up every factoid in google, they want to hear interesting stories and laugh out loud. They want to know why things work the way they do not from "howstuffworks.com" but from me.
If you read my previous posts, I went into flipping with all I had. There are MANY good reasons to do it. I am not sure that LEARNING is one of them anymore.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Flipclass assignments
Flipping my classroom has been awesome. I have gotten to know my students better amongst other myriad things about which I have already posted.
Lately, however, my students have been struggling getting work done. We have a 9th grade biology class that cannot seem to get everything done. After much deliberation and discussion with my co-teacher, we decided to change.
In the past, I just assigned "video notes" as homework with the only direction being that they take notes as if they were in class. Last year being my first year dipping into the well of flipping, this was and has been the easiest way for me to go. The biggest problem with that is that we could not figure out if students were actually learning anything while watching the notes. Also, they could easily just copy down what I said without actually watching (although to me, this is a minor point).
The decision we made was to make tiered assignments based on the notes. The first one I made was on energy passage through an ecosystem. Rather than my discussing ad nauseum here how it is done, it is easier to see one linked here. You see that they now have a choice. They can choose a 3/5, 4/5 or 5/5 on this assignment. Here is another much like it.
The key is that the required ones are ones they MUST know to pass any test over our objectives for the unit. The ones for a higher grade require a little more critical thinking and some original research. This is to hopefully motivate the upper level student to go above and beyond the "normal" assignment while giving the very busy or struggling student an "out" where they can still get it done but without the angst of having to "get it all done". This also introduces a little bit of educational choice. Students feel like they can choose how much to do. As Daniel Pink shows in DRIVE, feeling as if you have some control over your life can be motivating.
I realize that this is not a new concept but I have found it very easy to use and the students are now starting to get used to it after 3 assignments like it. I will be surveying them regarding the class soon and am excited to hear how they feel about it. One other key thing is that they have more than 1 night to get it done. I usually give them 1 or 2 every week.
On the due date, I use @crystalkirch WSQ idea and put one of the student's work (randomly) on the document camera. The class evaluates it and proposes changes in order to make it an "A" paper. We then go over the changes and discuss them. This is valuable on so many levels. The student whose paper it is gets evaluated by peers rather than me (they do not know whose it is unless the student blurts it out), they get quick feedback and can make adjustments to their own work painlessly.
I do not grade them on correctness of their work but merely that they tried it and have some kind of answer that makes it obvious that they tried. I do not worry about "cheating" because it is only worth a small portion of 20% of their grade and they will still have to take a summative over the material to prove that they do indeed understand and did not just copy their way to a grade.
So far, this has been a very good trial. Students can always work on this if they get done with our class work (lab etc.) and they know exactly what to do while watching the notes. They do NOT like the fact that the answers are not obvious but they have to actually think to get them correct (or close to it). I also like the fact that the work is non-googleable (is that a word?). There are no pat answers that can be found with a simple search. Too many assignments I used to give in the past were.
Please feel free to comment!
Lately, however, my students have been struggling getting work done. We have a 9th grade biology class that cannot seem to get everything done. After much deliberation and discussion with my co-teacher, we decided to change.
In the past, I just assigned "video notes" as homework with the only direction being that they take notes as if they were in class. Last year being my first year dipping into the well of flipping, this was and has been the easiest way for me to go. The biggest problem with that is that we could not figure out if students were actually learning anything while watching the notes. Also, they could easily just copy down what I said without actually watching (although to me, this is a minor point).
The decision we made was to make tiered assignments based on the notes. The first one I made was on energy passage through an ecosystem. Rather than my discussing ad nauseum here how it is done, it is easier to see one linked here. You see that they now have a choice. They can choose a 3/5, 4/5 or 5/5 on this assignment. Here is another much like it.
The key is that the required ones are ones they MUST know to pass any test over our objectives for the unit. The ones for a higher grade require a little more critical thinking and some original research. This is to hopefully motivate the upper level student to go above and beyond the "normal" assignment while giving the very busy or struggling student an "out" where they can still get it done but without the angst of having to "get it all done". This also introduces a little bit of educational choice. Students feel like they can choose how much to do. As Daniel Pink shows in DRIVE, feeling as if you have some control over your life can be motivating.
I realize that this is not a new concept but I have found it very easy to use and the students are now starting to get used to it after 3 assignments like it. I will be surveying them regarding the class soon and am excited to hear how they feel about it. One other key thing is that they have more than 1 night to get it done. I usually give them 1 or 2 every week.
On the due date, I use @crystalkirch WSQ idea and put one of the student's work (randomly) on the document camera. The class evaluates it and proposes changes in order to make it an "A" paper. We then go over the changes and discuss them. This is valuable on so many levels. The student whose paper it is gets evaluated by peers rather than me (they do not know whose it is unless the student blurts it out), they get quick feedback and can make adjustments to their own work painlessly.
I do not grade them on correctness of their work but merely that they tried it and have some kind of answer that makes it obvious that they tried. I do not worry about "cheating" because it is only worth a small portion of 20% of their grade and they will still have to take a summative over the material to prove that they do indeed understand and did not just copy their way to a grade.
So far, this has been a very good trial. Students can always work on this if they get done with our class work (lab etc.) and they know exactly what to do while watching the notes. They do NOT like the fact that the answers are not obvious but they have to actually think to get them correct (or close to it). I also like the fact that the work is non-googleable (is that a word?). There are no pat answers that can be found with a simple search. Too many assignments I used to give in the past were.
Please feel free to comment!
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Study guide or research?
So, I have always considered myself a good teacher. I teach all ages of high school and kids like to take my biology classes. I get along with all kinds of student. I have been doing this for 20 years and it wasn't until THIS year that I realize that I could have been doing SO much better. You see, I now have my son in my classroom taking AP biology. I now see how students view and do the work I assign. I now see that I have been doing it wrong for 20 years (well, if not wrong, then poorly).
I usually assign a study guide and reading from the text as homework. Well, last week I read @ichrislehman post on research in education. I thought about it and realized that I was guilty of telling kids what to research. So with my AP class, I tried a bit of a simple experiment, one that I could not do without my son in the class to observe his at-home work actions.
I assigned my normal 2 page study guide on fermentation (alcoholic and lactate) for them to do. This study guide is as comprehensive as I could make it with all of the information they needed to know. I also assigned them to summarize this question: How are muscle contraction, beer and bread making related?
I then was able to observe my son as he worked. It took him approximately 15 minutes to complete the study guide. He had his book in front of him but, rather than reading it, he merely looked through the text for the answers or copied down the diagrams as necessary. He then attacked the question. 5 minutes in, he says "this question is dumb." "I can't find the answer anywhere." Being a pretty good student, he spent another 20 minutes poring over the text before slamming it shut. I asked him what the problem was and he said "I have no idea how to answer that question." I then asked him why not? "I can't find the answer in the book." What he meant was: "I am so used to just looking for the correct answer, I have no idea how to RESEARCH and CONNECT to come up with an answer that works." After thinking for a while, he logged on to a computer and managed to come up with a response but then said , "But I have no idea if it is right or not."
All I could think is...why have I not done this all the time? He spent far more time and learned WAY more by trying to answer one simple question than he did on the whole 2 page "study guide". AND his answer is not really copyable. In other words, anyone can do the study guide and give it to everyone else...not everyone can come up with an original response to a research question.
I think we have been shortchanging kids in education for a long time now. We have been teaching our kids to "use the glossary" and "look it up in the dictionary" and " fill out this study guide (which to students means test review guide) and memorize it and you will get a good grade" when we should be getting them to see connections and answer simple questions with deep meaning. If I can get my students to spend 20 minutes researching a simple question, they will learn more than if they fill out a rote form. I think I taught that way because that is how I was taught. Now I dont have to teach that way anymore. It is freeing. The trick will be to come up with interesting questions that make the topic researchable. But that is fun! And way less work for me than making a 4 page study guide on anything
I usually assign a study guide and reading from the text as homework. Well, last week I read @ichrislehman post on research in education. I thought about it and realized that I was guilty of telling kids what to research. So with my AP class, I tried a bit of a simple experiment, one that I could not do without my son in the class to observe his at-home work actions.
I assigned my normal 2 page study guide on fermentation (alcoholic and lactate) for them to do. This study guide is as comprehensive as I could make it with all of the information they needed to know. I also assigned them to summarize this question: How are muscle contraction, beer and bread making related?
I then was able to observe my son as he worked. It took him approximately 15 minutes to complete the study guide. He had his book in front of him but, rather than reading it, he merely looked through the text for the answers or copied down the diagrams as necessary. He then attacked the question. 5 minutes in, he says "this question is dumb." "I can't find the answer anywhere." Being a pretty good student, he spent another 20 minutes poring over the text before slamming it shut. I asked him what the problem was and he said "I have no idea how to answer that question." I then asked him why not? "I can't find the answer in the book." What he meant was: "I am so used to just looking for the correct answer, I have no idea how to RESEARCH and CONNECT to come up with an answer that works." After thinking for a while, he logged on to a computer and managed to come up with a response but then said , "But I have no idea if it is right or not."
All I could think is...why have I not done this all the time? He spent far more time and learned WAY more by trying to answer one simple question than he did on the whole 2 page "study guide". AND his answer is not really copyable. In other words, anyone can do the study guide and give it to everyone else...not everyone can come up with an original response to a research question.
I think we have been shortchanging kids in education for a long time now. We have been teaching our kids to "use the glossary" and "look it up in the dictionary" and " fill out this study guide (which to students means test review guide) and memorize it and you will get a good grade" when we should be getting them to see connections and answer simple questions with deep meaning. If I can get my students to spend 20 minutes researching a simple question, they will learn more than if they fill out a rote form. I think I taught that way because that is how I was taught. Now I dont have to teach that way anymore. It is freeing. The trick will be to come up with interesting questions that make the topic researchable. But that is fun! And way less work for me than making a 4 page study guide on anything
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
What makes my school awesome to work at
So...what did your staff do on the first day of school professional development? In the past, our staff met, had a keynote speaker, gave out some awards, had some meetings and left for the day looking forward to 2 more of the same.
This is what we did today:
8 am:
1. We met as a whole school community (bus drivers, parapros, teachers, admin etc.) in the auditorium.
2. Our superintendent had a 10 minute presentation (hilarious) about what he learned in his first year on the job (he learned that if he is only half as good as the last one, he will be fine :) )
3. Each administrator (transportation through administration) introduced new staff and noted the ones who have worked there for a certain number of years (10, 20, 30)
4. We split into 16 "power teams" (I am on the pink power processors team and wear a pink shirt!) that are a mix of all staff. My team has 2 admin, 8 teachers, food service, bus drivers, parapros, admin. assistants. We met in a classroom to get our instructions for the day. We also collected 50 cents from each member of the power team.
5. Each power team had to go to 3 business partners in the community and thank them for what they do for our school every year. We rode school buses, went to the local companies and delivered a care package with a note signed by the staff thanking them for contributing to our school community. We then had to find a way to use our money to "pay it forward" by using the money to help out in the community somehow. We only had $10 but we were able to parlay that into a free oil change for a customer at the auto store, 3 free children's haircuts for a family and gave $5 a family at the grocery store to assist with the bill. We had to take pictures everywhere we went and generally had to spread good cheer in the community.
6. We returned to school, got back in the classroom and spent the next 30 minutes brainstorming how we would pay it forward all year as a team. Our team will clean up baseball fields in the spring, attend a sporting event and collect canned goods, donate any gift cards we receive to needy families, and every once in a while, buy a student lunch.
7. After we finished with that, we had lunch together.
8. We gathered back in the auditorium to celebrate what we had done that morning by looking at pictures from the morning and talking about what we were going to do.
For the afternoon, we were free to work in our classrooms and prepare for the upcoming year.
I am not sure I have ever felt more a part of the community than I did today. I live in the town and am a teacher there. I live 2 minutes from school and 5 minutes from every business we visited. We saw many former students and parents of students along the way.
What a great message to send from our administration about what is important to our school.
Our community knows that we are all about service. We are all about giving back to the community for what they do for us. That is powerful and more important than any speaker. When people see teachers, bus drivers, custodians etc. all together giving back, that speaks volumes by itself.
I live in the community and am less than 5 minutes drive time from every place we visited. All of those people now see me differently. I am not "just a teacher" but someone who genuinely cares and likes to be a part of the community.
I think if EVERY school did this, the negative messages sent about public education would vanish. If every school in Michigan sent their staff out into the community to thank them and ask what else they could do, people would WANT their kids to be a part of that kind of society.
This is what we did today:
8 am:
1. We met as a whole school community (bus drivers, parapros, teachers, admin etc.) in the auditorium.
2. Our superintendent had a 10 minute presentation (hilarious) about what he learned in his first year on the job (he learned that if he is only half as good as the last one, he will be fine :) )
3. Each administrator (transportation through administration) introduced new staff and noted the ones who have worked there for a certain number of years (10, 20, 30)
4. We split into 16 "power teams" (I am on the pink power processors team and wear a pink shirt!) that are a mix of all staff. My team has 2 admin, 8 teachers, food service, bus drivers, parapros, admin. assistants. We met in a classroom to get our instructions for the day. We also collected 50 cents from each member of the power team.
5. Each power team had to go to 3 business partners in the community and thank them for what they do for our school every year. We rode school buses, went to the local companies and delivered a care package with a note signed by the staff thanking them for contributing to our school community. We then had to find a way to use our money to "pay it forward" by using the money to help out in the community somehow. We only had $10 but we were able to parlay that into a free oil change for a customer at the auto store, 3 free children's haircuts for a family and gave $5 a family at the grocery store to assist with the bill. We had to take pictures everywhere we went and generally had to spread good cheer in the community.
6. We returned to school, got back in the classroom and spent the next 30 minutes brainstorming how we would pay it forward all year as a team. Our team will clean up baseball fields in the spring, attend a sporting event and collect canned goods, donate any gift cards we receive to needy families, and every once in a while, buy a student lunch.
7. After we finished with that, we had lunch together.
8. We gathered back in the auditorium to celebrate what we had done that morning by looking at pictures from the morning and talking about what we were going to do.
For the afternoon, we were free to work in our classrooms and prepare for the upcoming year.
I am not sure I have ever felt more a part of the community than I did today. I live in the town and am a teacher there. I live 2 minutes from school and 5 minutes from every business we visited. We saw many former students and parents of students along the way.
What a great message to send from our administration about what is important to our school.
Our community knows that we are all about service. We are all about giving back to the community for what they do for us. That is powerful and more important than any speaker. When people see teachers, bus drivers, custodians etc. all together giving back, that speaks volumes by itself.
I live in the community and am less than 5 minutes drive time from every place we visited. All of those people now see me differently. I am not "just a teacher" but someone who genuinely cares and likes to be a part of the community.
I think if EVERY school did this, the negative messages sent about public education would vanish. If every school in Michigan sent their staff out into the community to thank them and ask what else they could do, people would WANT their kids to be a part of that kind of society.
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