A disappointing semester teaching

Change is not an easy thing. It can be so difficult, in fact, that I sometimes feel like I have to make a conscious effort to not discard something just because it's different. I really try and work with change and remain positive instead of moaning and groaning.

When our school decided to go to an alternating block schedule for this school year, I was very skeptical, but I thought it would give me an opportunity to become a better teacher. I worked with an "expert" on block scheduling and tried to redo my teaching techniques a bit in order to become more effective.

Unfortunately, I can now say definitively that I hate the alternating block. As I began to make the review for my students final exams, it became clear how poorly things have gone for me this year. My trig/precal class has covered two and a half chapters in a semester. Now if you consider the fact that in a normal year, we cover around 11 chapters, it becomes rather obvious that we're getting half the work done we used to. All of that makes sense if you consider that we meet every other day.

Why is it that experts in education continue to come back to this idea of teaching on the block. It has never worked well for most schools, but it continues to come back time and time again.

Another bad loss

Well, I have come to the conclusion that we are not very good and it will take a while for us to get better. My post players played their best game of the season last night, but my guards were terrible. We handled the full court pressure poorly and we just basically stunk.

Now we have a big game on Friday against a team we should beat. We'll see.

I hit the big time

I had one of my few lifetime television appearances last night. A teacher friend of mine was interviewed about his new position as a teacher coach hear at Overton. They needed to have another teacher to put on camera and I happened to be in the office when they were looking for someone.

Here's the link:
http://www.newschannel5.com/global/story.asp?s=11643971

I'm the good looking one

Getting injured for the first time

I had a freshman player who sprained her ankle during our game against Hillwood. It was late in the game and she landed on another girls foot and rolled it. It swelled up big and she was in obvious pain.

What's funny is I have seen this exact same thing hundreds of times while coaching and I always ask the same thing "knee or ankle?" to the trainer. When they say ankle, it is always a relief. Almost every time, ankles aren't that big a deal.

No convincing players and parents that it isn't that big of a deal is a different story, but I guarantee she plays by the end of the week.

The first time I hurt an ankle was when I was a senior in high school. It was a Selection Sunday for the NCAA tournament and I was playing basketball by myself in the driveway. I jumped and landed half on the driveway half on the grass and rolled my left ankle. I could feel the crunch of ligaments stretching and tearing. When I came inside, my parents decided to wait until after the selection show before we went to the ER. They took an XRay at the ER and it was negative.

My baseball coach was not pleased when he found out about my injury. He asked for details on how it happened and even brought in my best friend, Todd, to confirm my story. It seems that my coach was convinced I injured myself doing something I shouldn't have been doing like playing in a basketball league (which I was). But, since Todd knew nothing of the injury, Coach Kas dropped it.

What's funny is after the initial pain of an ankle sprain, I can move just fine even if my ankle is blue. I now know that it isn't a big deal and I can just suck it up. Many of my players have figured that out as well and are back the next day after a sprain.

Responding to a win

We beat a really bad team on Friday by 23. Our effort was good. Our execution was OK. We may have found our defense in a half court trapping 2-3 zone. They really worked at it and everyone seemed engaged. I will say we still have to work on specific rotations and assignments, but I am confident we are going where we need to go.

We have a big game tomorrow and I am curious how the girls will respond after a win. Our top bench player hurt her ankle and will probably be out.

You never know what's going on at home

A couple of games ago, I had a parent come over during a game and tap me on the shoulder to ask why her daughter wasn't playing. There was three minutes left in the game and her daughter (and about 3 other girls) had not gotten into the game even though we were down by 15-20 points. I must admit that I was a bit taken aback. I told her very quickly that we were not going to talk about that right now. A few minutes later, I cleared the bench and the player went into the game.

One of the interesting parts of this story is that the girl was horrified. She knows the rules and I had a parent meeting specifically to talk about things like playing time. Her mother didn't come to the meeting, but signed the contract stating that I will not talk about playing time on game days.

Well, I had an interesting talk with the player today when I asked her "Do you get along with your mom?"

She responded by saying "When she is drinking."

It was stunning. This is the sweetest, hardest working girl on our team. She is not very good, but she is a great teammate and person. Unfortunately, he mom has a drinking problem and she goes crazy sometimes.

My hope as a coach is that I can be one adult who these girls trust and respect. I want them to see my stable life and family and want to copy it. I want them to see that I deal with my mistakes and deal with my families issues and I still love them.

That wasn't on the online test

There are certain things in coaching (and in life) that no class can prepare you for. Our practice yesterday was one of those.

This was one of the few practices that we started immediately after school. Usually, the freshman team practices for an hour before we get on the floor at 3:30. However, the freshman had an away game so we got to practice from 2:20-4:30.

That was the first problem. One of my players had scheduled her driver's liscence exam for after school and she thought she'd miss just the first part of practice. Now, she was going to miss the entire practice. That left us with 8 players (since my three freshman were at their game). So, I thought we would just work on some individual skill stuff.

That's where the fun really begins. Unbeknownst to me, there was a blood drive yesterday in the small gym. When that happens, the people from the Red Cross try and finish up before the end of school and have all of their equipment out be 2:30. So, I told the girls to get dressed and we would just warm up and stretch while the Red Cross finished.

Unfortunately, at 2:30 they still had a student in a chair giving blood and they had just started picking up. If I get upset, then I look like a jerk, but now we are missing a day of practice. I started scrambling to figure out something to do and my assistant and I decided we could watch some game film.

At 3:00, we checked on the gym and it was open, but the bleachers were still pulled out and there were Cokes spilled on the floor and trash everywhere. It was 3:30 before I got on the floor and started coaching.

As my first year assistant was mopping up a Coke, I asked her if this is what she thought coaching would be like. She said "This wasn't on my online coaching test."

Teaching something for the first time

I had the kids in my trig class do a project today. We spent the entire hour and a half doing something that should have taken 45 minutes. What is interesting to me, is that everything always works this way. Whenever I do something new, it takes way too long and everyone screws it up.

It's the same way with the basketball team. If I want to put a play in or run a new defense, I have to teach it to the girls at least two games before we need it. I can't make up a play in a timeout and expect them to run it correctly.

So today we are going to work on a zone offense for our game next Tuesday.

1 step forward 2 steps back

Played another inferior opponent yesterday and lost. I am really frustrated with our execution. Against a man defense, we did great. Then they switched to zone and we were terrible. Our point guard just make too many mistakes. I may move her to the wing when we play against a zone.

We pressed for the first time and it looked good. Maybe that's who we need to be.