By Patrick Lyons, Director, Teaching and Learning
Every summer I volunteer to coach my son’s soccer team and, over the past four years, I’ve coached squash during the fall and winter months to both youth and adults. While I’ve participated in both of these sports for some time (soccer as a youth and squash for 20+ years), it’s only been in the last few years that I’ve started coaching. I’ve discovered that I really enjoy it and, as I reflect on my career in teaching and learning at Carleton, I’ve come to realize that my teaching philosophy has been shifting since I started coaching.
I have always considered coaching as a form of teaching. Coaching is about demonstrating a skill or technique, or explaining a strategy with context, and then providing opportunities for players to practice these skills and techniques by themselves and with each other. While players practice, a coach assesses – not to mark, but to provide feedback, whether its correcting an incorrect application, providing positive reinforcement when players ‘get it’, encouraging players to keep trying, and, ultimately, allowing players to reach their full potential. The key is letting them experiment, while providing feedback and correction.
Good coaches scaffold skills and techniques, helping players master the basics and then building up to more advanced skills, applications and concepts. Consider squash. Some believe squash is a difficult sport to learn. Superficially it seems like a simple game – players hit a small ball with a racquet in an enclosed space. However, squash is frequently described as playing a game of chess at high speed. Because it’s played in an enclosed space, squash is both a physically demanding sport (requiring racquet skills and a mixture of grace and explosiveness) and a mental game – observing your opponent, selecting and adapting a strategy that maximizes their effort and movement (at the same time minimizing your own effort). Now throw in fitness and you have a sport that can be complicated to master.
This is where a coach is invaluable for players. When I introduce squash to a new player, I try to understand their previous experiences. Have they played racquet sports or are they completely fresh to the game? What can I use to help them learn to play? Consider best practices in teaching – what prior knowledge are learners bringing into the classroom? Are there experiences that we can activate to help them learn new knowledge?
As I show a player how to hold a squash racquet and then hit the ball, I am starting with the basics, to get them comfortable. I am looking to give them opportunities to practice one of the most basic and important skills in squash – the forehand drive. In teaching, after we’ve assessed learners’ prior knowledge, we introduce key concepts that build on their previous knowledge and give them opportunities to practice. This could be solving a problem, discussing a concept with a peer, writing and replying to a post online, or any other activity that gets them to apply the concept or idea shared in class.
As a new player hits a forehand drive, I watch and assess. Are they applying the correct technique? Is their grip on the racquet too high or too low? Are they starting their swing at the right place? What about their follow through? As a coach, I need to guide the player and give them the type of feedback to help make a correction (if one is needed). Great coaches are able to quickly identify the error and provide a path forward for the player to improve. Seem familiar to teaching? When students submit work or share ideas in class, what sort of feedback can we give to help them achieve our desired learning outcome? How do we make this feedback personal and meaningful to help the individual learn and improve (especially when teaching large classes…)? How can we help learners apply our feedback?
When coaching a person new to squash, it’s relatively straightforward to observe their mastery of a basic technique. This makes it easy for a coach to start adding in new challenges and skills – all building on previous techniques. Once a player has mastered a forehand drive, I can move on to modifications of the shot. Or introduce movement. Or shift to the backhand side of the court. With teaching, it may not be so easy to observe mastery, but there are pedagogical approaches that can help us understand when students are approaching mastery. Using technology such as clickers, frequent formative assessments, keen classroom observations (being attuned to the pulse of the class), or asking students probing questions are all approaches that teachers use to check understanding and development.
Some simplistic definitions state that teaching is the transfer of knowledge from an expert to a student. This definition is not a good fit for me as I believe teaching is about facilitating learning – this could be through applying coaching, mentoring, or direct instruction, or whatever approach is the best fit for a given situation. Reflecting on my coaching helps me realize that while I already include coaching approaches in my teaching, I hadn’t fully realized all of its benefits.
Some questions for you to consider: Does coaching fit into your teaching philosophy? How could you include coaching in large, content rich courses? How do you encourage and achieve mastery in your learners in complex, core courses? Particularly when you have to ‘cover’ so much material, to ensure students are ready for the next course(s)? We’d love to know your answers to these questions, so please do share with us (oavptl@carleton.ca).
P.S. Finally, as you might have guessed, I enjoy both playing and coaching squash. If you are new to the game or would like to be introduced to the sport, I’d be pleased to help you get started. Send me an email at patrick.lyons@carleton.ca.