Communication in Learning
In determining what my graduate education had contributed to my understanding of coaching and collegiate level education as a whole, I am drawn most to my course work in coaching itself, and in the syntheses between adult and youth education. Those I teach are at the precipice between true adulthood and the end of their childhood, and in this respect challenge any instructor in terms of what they know, how they know it, how this previous knowledge can be applied to their continuing education and finally how I, or any instructor, might use interpersonal communication and relationships to disseminate superior knowledge that will benefit these students moving forward. The crux of my graduate education has been learning to connect with students and student athletes, that they might benefit from my knowledge and that I might use knowledge of who they are, individually, as learners as I try to enrich and advance each individual’s education. I have come to believe that communication, information and individual based teaching are the keys to all sides’ success in this process. This conviction is born of my education at Michigan State, and has yielded interesting thought and even more interesting results.
Something that has become clear to me during my master’s studies is that I teach and coach people who could be considered both adult learners and young learners. I’ve taken courses that concern themselves only with adult education, such as EAD 861. I've taken courses that focus only in teaching and coaching young students and athletes, such as KIN 857 which explored the fundamentals of childhood education in athletics. I've taken ED 800, which sought to cover the whole of educational practice, changing the focus from practices best suited to an elementary classroom to those best suited to a college level classroom, without much distinction drawn between the two situations. I have come to believe that the students I work with at Michigan State, especially the student athletes, have to be navigated by their instructors and coaches because at different times and in different situations, they can transition from adult learners to young learners fairly fluidly and this transition is based on the requirements of individual students; their changing status as learners is mercurial, and though this is an obvious condition of the whole, the specific conditions that cause a 19 year old college student to behave as either an adult learner or a youth learner are entirely dependent upon that person, and the instructor can only effectively navigate their changing status by developing interpersonal relationships to the greatest depth of their ability. This is a difficult proposition when considering that a freshmen or sophomore classroom might contain forty or more students, and a position or assistant coach for a collegiate team could have anywhere between 10-20 athletes under their attention at any one time. Developing a method for addressing these challenges was a major theme of my studies in EAD 801.
Developing meaningful interpersonal relationships with one’s students when time is limited and the room is crowded is a difficult task, especially when considering that these students are trying to adapt to college level study, learning about their classmates and their fellow students and, even more trying, possibly participating in collegiate athletics at a high level. The psychological aspect of this challenge was taught to me in KIN 855. It is not terribly difficult for most college coaches to develop relationships that will aid their student’s learning the game and help student athletes as they, for lack of a better phrase, learn to learn, but for classroom instructors it becomes more difficult. While I’ve never, as a student, taken much stock in the early semester “ice breaker” activities that often occur at the beginning of college classes, I have come to believe staunchly in the inclusion of a website, chat or message board, or other online resource for any class, be it an actual online endeavor or otherwise. My graduate studies have taught me that todays young people are becoming more and more comfortable and adept with online interpersonal interaction, meaning that the instructor can engage them using the aforementioned means and, using almost none of the time face to face after class or office hours time required of face to face interaction, begin to understand the personal learning requirements of their students.
On the other hand, there is a correlation between the technical difficulties of adult learners (unfamiliar technology, lack of experience in online interaction, hesitation to commit to technological processes, etc.) and the technical difficulties of young learners who come form disadvantaged areas, rural areas or who have simply not enjoyed a full and focused technological education. Bothe groups, when confronted with their ignorance of the unfamiliar platform (or platforms) of communication, will typically underperform or outright ignore what they consider to be impossible course requirements. Here, the instructor can easily identify those who are struggling with the online interactions of a class by simply identifying the underperforming students. Those who have not completed their online interactions, or who have been less than substantive or unorganized in these aspect of the class, are likely in need of a meeting in person and a face-to-face relationship with the instructor so that the baseline of personal knowledge of the student can be established. Though the needs and differences between adult and youth learners are far broader than this in general, in specific, as the young college student can behave at once as both, the inclusion of an online course basis for communication can help all involved to better understand one another and the process of learning at large.
Another area in which my studies at Michigan State as a graduate student have instructed me that appreciation of the learner is paramount to the goals of the instructor is the danger of assumed knowledge. When a student enrolls in a college level class, an instructor might reasonably assume that the student has either a honest and developed interest in the subject or that the student has completed prerequisites relating directly to and preparing them for the class in question. This is not true, not all the time in field requirements and certainly not in electives. This is not always, or even usually, the case, and instructors need to prepare as such.
I’ve had the honor of teaching a class, ED300E - Coaching Football, at MSU. Walking into the class for the first time I assumed that the students would all be at least former high school football players, students of the game as fans since grammar school and interested in learning the sport from as from position of those who are intent of coaching at the youth, high school or even collegiate level in the future. What I found, within the first week of teaching this class, were several students who met and exceeded my criterion of expected interest and credentials. Several others thought the course would be basically being invited to attend several MSU summer workouts, coach some youth athletes at a camp eventually and generally regale the class with anecdotes of their high school or small college play before their matriculated to MSU. Finally, there were the students who knew very little about any technical aspects of the game and who were more or less mildly interested in football and were seeking an easy grade in an easy elective. I also had one international student who knew only that American football is not soccer, and wanted to better understand what se saw as a national obsession, which I really respected.
It became clear to me that I couldn’t approach the course from a typical perspective of “here’s what we’re learning, here’s why we’re learning it, here’s what’s expected of you” because thee was so much disparity within the demographics of the class. I decided that I would break my instruction down into three parts: Functionality, the bare bones process of the field’s dimensions, yard lines, basic rules of down and distance expanding all the way through to the strategic necessities of offensive and defensive football, were all required. Secondly, the requirements of a coach, from identifying athletes that will benefit the coach’s position group through how to organize a practice as a position coach through what special teams, offense, defense and whole team function require would have to be taught in order to ensure the broad strokes of craft were not lost on individual students. Third, I knew I had to teach the class by doing, by watching them actually try to impart technique, attitude and demeanor to young players who were eager to do as told and impress. The first part of the class’s education would ensure they knew the difference between a yard line and a hash. The second part would ensure they knew the difference between going for a first down on third and inches and going for a first down on 3rd and 20, with all the attendant odds and risk in each case addressed. The third part, I knew, would be the most important part, because it would determine if the members of my class could learn specific movements of the body and effectively relate these to the actions of their own student athletes. In this final phase of instruction, the core of coaching would be addressed and the students would be thrown into an exam far more difficult to take than any test they’d ever attempted before. I knew this because it is a test I personally take daily, teaching student athletes how to do their jobs from my perspective of success, understanding and personal tradition of knowledge. In truth, I was sending them on a very kind errand, because the camp at which they were coaching was designed toward serious young athletes who had experience at following instruction for their position groups, as opposed to, say, a field full of 7th graders with their headgear rigged wrong and their mouths’ wide open.
In the end, those who I thought would fail because of their initially casual attitude did quite well. Those who I thought would struggle ended up exceeding the bounds of their inexperience and thriving to the best of their ability, and those who came in well versed in the process of playing, understanding and coaching football were tested, as I intended them to be, by the functional application of what they thought that on which they though they had a good handle. I was pleased, and pleased mostly because my instruction was hinged on the capabilities of each student, elements of education I could not have identified without considering the individual strengths and weaknesses of each as an individual.
Cohesion is the point, first, foremost and finally. The student who is unversed in the technical must be taught the technical. The student who is well versed in the technical but is lacking in the interpersonal must be engaged on an interpersonal level. The young coach who thinks he or she has all the answers based on prior experience must be taught that they are actually starting from page one, and the young coach who thinks they have no idea how the process might begin must be taught that they know more about teaching, coaching and relating than they ever even realized. From first to last, the instructor addresses these issues of personal knowledge and communication, and I have been both teacher and student in this regard. My graduate training at Michigan State had taught me that any situation, however big the disconnect between one side of the podium and the other, can be solved through strategic communication. My training has also committed me to facilitating, improving and teaching this process from first to last, because I have come to regard it as the very foundation of education in specific and of learning in general.