tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12463894646332359802024-03-12T18:29:09.158-07:00What I'm Learning on Teaching and CoachingBeth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-52032619342643218282015-07-23T12:52:00.001-07:002015-07-23T12:52:38.956-07:00Summer 2015 reading this far<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">Eclectic reading so far...getting into using my Kindle and iPad so had so go online for some of these photos. </span></div><div><br></div><div>So refreshing to read as much as I like to start my day everyday! </div><div><br></div><div>Suggestions appreciated! Sport Illustrated every week is a given though :)</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8z4R5Q0wS1s/VbFF-8h_z6I/AAAAAAAABoY/WO0bBFUbfuY/s640/blogger-image-870980905.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-8z4R5Q0wS1s/VbFF-8h_z6I/AAAAAAAABoY/WO0bBFUbfuY/s640/blogger-image-870980905.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><font color="#000000" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-X_RHCGGpb9M/VbFGAlxYq2I/AAAAAAAABoo/HZ9gPY9sAT0/s640/blogger-image--1836991613.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-X_RHCGGpb9M/VbFGAlxYq2I/AAAAAAAABoo/HZ9gPY9sAT0/s640/blogger-image--1836991613.jpg"></a></font></div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yD9USqsE8UA/VbFF_t7I4MI/AAAAAAAABog/KIP_s0siOG4/s640/blogger-image-535000336.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-yD9USqsE8UA/VbFF_t7I4MI/AAAAAAAABog/KIP_s0siOG4/s640/blogger-image-535000336.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rYjGVCauYwo/VbFGBa2KduI/AAAAAAAABow/L45bfiLce5g/s640/blogger-image--501894992.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-rYjGVCauYwo/VbFGBa2KduI/AAAAAAAABow/L45bfiLce5g/s640/blogger-image--501894992.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><br></div>Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-34650971121090795972015-06-10T17:33:00.001-07:002015-06-10T17:33:17.694-07:00Teachers can't compete with smartphonesI admit it. For all the trying in the world, I still can't compete with a smartphone. And although a very technologically oriented person myself, I'm all for banning them entirely from my classroom.<br />
<br />
I mean, I have a small love affair with my iPhone. I even have a smartwatch, for Pete's sake. I get it. I used to not bring the phone to class, ever. Then, I started bringing it to class since I thought I might be able to make a bigger impact by modelling for students that I can control when I look at it. When it sends me a notification and I'm in the middle of something, I can continue teaching or helping a student or the conversation I am having. Students interrupt and urgently say, "Ms. Barz, you got a message!" or, "your phone just went off; shouldn't you check that?"<br />
<br />
No, no, no, no and no.<br />
<br />
These "no" statements are how I feel when I interact with students who are distracted - scratch that, rather, controlled - by cell phones. It's all NEGATIVE. In fact, with a handful of students, I can count on one hand how many times I've had a positive interaction with them in almost 90 school days this semester. And yet multiple times everyday, I ask them to put away their phones and get insolence, a snarky response, a lie ("it's my Mom," or "I'm not even on it!" or "I'm just checking the time, geez" or "I'm just changing the song.") or even a profanity for me having the gall to ask them to do what their supposed to be doing in class.<br />
<br />
I thought I could try some humour to help the issue starting this past fall. My classroom door has had this sign on it for the entire school year:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pvwSvaT3drc/VXjQx5HFyAI/AAAAAAAABns/qVSBQGq5pgc/s1600/Keep%2BCalm%2BPhones%2BB%2526W.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pvwSvaT3drc/VXjQx5HFyAI/AAAAAAAABns/qVSBQGq5pgc/s320/Keep%2BCalm%2BPhones%2BB%2526W.png" width="256" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
It didn't work. Pretty sure that the students didn't even notice it. And, honestly, I do find phones a useful tool in a classroom when used for only the task at hand. In some classes, they are regularly used since computer labs and the change to newer technology has necessitated the move to support student and staff Bring-Your-Own-IT initiatives.<br />
<br />
So, this semester, I started with a bin for cell phones with the label below.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eLFxZaAd3E0/VXjQas0cLdI/AAAAAAAABnk/7ULLlEYYm-M/s1600/Phone%2Bbin.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="93" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eLFxZaAd3E0/VXjQas0cLdI/AAAAAAAABnk/7ULLlEYYm-M/s320/Phone%2Bbin.png" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
That didn't last, either. I asked students to put them in the bin when they walked into class. Simple solution, right? Not so much.<br />
<br />
Then I actually started to walk around the class with the bin and to prompt every student to put their phone in the bin, again prompting a negative interaction with nearly every student to start the day. Unfortunately, it also singled out the few kids who don't have phones, too, which added to the negativity as a whole. So I crossed that strategy off my list.<br />
<br />
A suggestion that has come up several times is having a three strike rule. Given that many classes have 25 students in them, that would mean 75 reminders or negative interactions. To put the potential severity of this into perspective, this could mean that I would have one negative interaction for EVERY MINUTE of class, as 75 minute classes are the norm in Ontario. In short, I could basically do nothing but desperately plead with kids to put their phones away for the entire period and spend no time at all actually teaching to the curriculum, EQAO standardized testing or anything of any conceivable value. This seems woefully wasteful of both their time and mine.<br />
<br />
Negativity goes against everything I stand for as a person and that I hope to encourage as a classroom teacher. My simple goal is to have a positive interaction with every student every day. After all, the research says that even a 20 minute conversation can make an impact with a student, no matter how trivial it may seem at the time. Those 20 minute conversations grow out of trust and positivity; I'm convinced of it.<br />
<br />
Ask most people who know me well and they will say I'm definitely on the glass-half-full side of life...bordering on full-out, relentless positivity. So, I don't want to be the person who has to start my class three times each day with a negative interaction with almost every student. I do want students to be able to mature and grow into people who can focus when necessary and who can use phones at appropriate times that are agreed upon in our class. And, I do want the classroom to be as positive as possible. We're not perfect in this education system...but we can be better.<br />
<br />
Any and all positive solutions welcome from all integral parts of the education trifecta - parents, students and school staff.<br />
<br />
Thanks.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-67637437567444948462015-01-01T11:29:00.003-08:002015-01-01T11:29:20.017-08:00Books for Coaches - Book Review on Questions<i>A More Beautiful Question</i> by Warren Berger was a highlight of my reading in 2014!<br />
<br />
<div class="p1">
Below is a copy of the notes I took on my iPhone - please excuse the grammatical errors and punctuation issues. The Notes app isn't all that helpful when trying to add different characters or linking information. I've tried to be consistent, however, I'm sure there will be many mistakes!<br />
<br />
Chapter Two particularly resonated for me since the "Question Formulation Technique" has such potential for usage in any classroom. However, Chapter Five (questioning for life) also seems helpful for this time of year, when many want to take a closer look at daily routines.... I know there are a few provocative questions that I'll be looking at over the next few days! </div>
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<br /></div>
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Introduction:</div>
<div class="p1">
"always the beautiful answer</div>
<div class="p1">
who asks a more beautiful question."</div>
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~ e.e. cummings</div>
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• a 4 yr old girls asks 390 questions a day</div>
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• Why-What If-How model</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chapter One: The Power of Inquiry</div>
<div class="p1">
• a naive questioner can sometimes be the best questioner since they challenge status quo</div>
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"Questions are the engines of intellect - cerebral machines that convert curiosity into controlled inquiry." ~ David Hackett Fischer</div>
<div class="p1">
• good questioners tend to be aware of, and quite comfortable with, their own ignorance.</div>
<div class="p1">
• knowledge is a commodity - easily accessible - value of explicit information is dropping</div>
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• must be lifelong learners - become neotenous (biological term that describes the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood)</div>
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" Computers are useless - they can only give you answers." ~ Picasso</div>
<div class="p1">
• the Why stage - first questioning, formulating, and framing the initial question that articulates the challenge at hand, and tries to gain some understanding of the context.</div>
<div class="p1">
• basic formula is Q + A = I (innovation). Can also be Q - A = P (philosophy)</div>
<div class="p1">
• Graham Wallace - wrote the classic process of creativity - Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Implementation.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chapter Two: Why We Stop Questioning</div>
<div class="p1">
• a child asks 40 thousand questions between age 2 and 5</div>
<div class="p1">
• creativity stops because children stop questioning</div>
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• Why are we sending kids to school in the first place?</div>
<div class="p1">
Deborah Meier - Central Park East Schools:</div>
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- What might the potential for humans be if we really encouraged that spirit of questioning in children , instead of closing it down?</div>
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She developed five learning skills or habits of mind:</div>
<div class="p1">
1. Evidence: how do we know what's true or false? What evidence counts?</div>
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2. Viewpoint: How might this look if we stepped into other shoes, or looked at it from a different direction?</div>
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3. Connection: Is there a pattern? Have we seen something like this before?</div>
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4. Conjecture: What if it were different?</div>
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5. Why does this matter?</div>
<div class="p1">
• <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_meyer_math_curriculum_makeover?language=en" target="_blank">Dan Meyer</a> - HS math teacher - TED talk - lesson on how long will it take to fill a water tank?</div>
<div class="p1">
--he used a visual - video of a water tank filling up agonizingly slowly...students then wonder how long it's going to take...</div>
<div class="p1">
• class structure determines who will ask questions...upper and middle ask more, lower asks next to none for fear of reprisal, discipline, sticking out, etc</div>
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• <a href="http://rightquestion.org/" target="_blank">Right Question Institute's</a> "Question Formulation Technique"</div>
<div class="p1">
-- Ling Se Peet used this with her class for a lesson on torture. She stated, "Torture can be justified." </div>
<div class="p1">
-- this opening statement is known as a Q-focus because its purpose is to provide a focal point for generating questions from students.</div>
<div class="p1">
-- each group's initial task was to come up with as many questions as possible, within a time limit, pertaining to the statement</div>
<div class="p1">
-- after reviewing a set of rules (write each question down, don't debate or try to answer questions, just keep trying to think of more questions) students start to come at the premise from many angles</div>
<div class="p1">
-- stage two: change open questions to closed questions and closed questions to open questions</div>
<div class="p1">
--- ie, Why is torture effective? might be changed to "Is torture effective?"</div>
<div class="p1">
-- the purpose of this step is to show that a question can be narrowed down in some cases or expanded in others.</div>
<div class="p1">
-- the way you ask a question yields different results and can lead you in different directions</div>
<div class="p1">
-- next, students are asked to prioritize their questions: to figure out which three were most important to the discussion to move forward</div>
<div class="p1">
--- this is the convergent part of questioning - to question effectively, students must learn to analyze their own questions and zero in on ones they would like to pursue further</div>
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<br />
RQI question focus:</div>
<div class="p1">
1. Teachers design Question Focus (ie Torture can be justified)</div>
<div class="p1">
2. Students produce questions (no help from teacher, no answering or debating, write down everything, change statements to questions</div>
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3. Students improve their questions - usually asked to pick three favs</div>
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4. Students & teacher decide on next steps - for acting on the priorized questions</div>
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5. Students reflect on what they have learned</div>
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Questioning involves Divergent, Convergent and Metacognitive thinking - these are both subtle and complex...</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chapter Three: The Why, What If, and How of Innovative Questioning</div>
<div class="p1">
Asking powerful why questions:</div>
<div class="p1">
• step back</div>
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• notice what others miss</div>
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• challenge assumptions (including our own)</div>
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• gain a deeper understanding of the situation or problem at hand, through contextual inquiry</div>
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• question the questions we're asking</div>
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• take ownership of a particular question.</div>
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-- stepping back can be easier in a different place or situation</div>
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-- taking time to reflect and question is essential!</div>
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--Robert Burton writes about "the certainty epidemic" - the condition of thinking we know more than we do</div>
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-- we don't pay attention well</div>
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-- we make judgements in fractions of a second: THIS I'll pay attention to, everything else I'll ignore because (a) it doesn't concern/interest me or (b) I already know about it</div>
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• Questioning allows people to synthesize and simplify</div>
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• zen principle - shoshin - beginner's mind</div>
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• you can do this as an expert by detaching or observing yourself as I you were a third party</div>
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• try for vuja de - backwards déjà vu</div>
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- Most of us don't observe well or deeply enough, for example:</div>
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• 4X4 grid of squares - how many squares do you see? </div>
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The easy answer is 16 - in addition there are nine 2x2 squares, four 3x3 squares and one large 4x4 squares...can even count 30 black squares and 30 white squares....</div>
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- point is, there is always another way of looking at it...</div>
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- challenger questions: </div>
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"Why should we settle for what currently exists?"</div>
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"And why should I believe you when you tell me something can't be done?"</div>
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- these are challenger questions!!</div>
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<br />
Questioning the question:</div>
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"Why am I asking why?"</div>
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-- ie, the five whys</div>
<div class="p1">
<br />
Open and close the question and vice versa</div>
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-- contextual inquiry is about asking questions up close and in context, relying on observation, listening and empathy to guide us toward a more intelligent, and therefore more effective, question.</div>
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- to do contextual questioning well you must LISTEN - listening informs questioning.</div>
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-- the difference between just asking a question or pursuing it is the difference between flirting with an idea or living with it -- it can be a productive obsession!</div>
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• What If?</div>
<div class="p1">
--in order for our imagination to flourish, there must be an opportunity to see things as other than they are or appear to be. This begins with a simple question: What If? It is a process of introducing something strange and perhaps even demonstrably untrue in our current situation or perspective."</div>
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-- connective inquiry is what the What If question encourages</div>
<div class="p1">
-- also encourages smart recombinations (is Pandora is radio station and search engine)</div>
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"A difficult question at night is resolved in the morning when the committee of sleep has worked on it." ~ John Steinbeck (couldn't agree more, John!).</div>
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- similarly, taking a walk, going to a museum, etc, is a good way to spark connective thinking</div>
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- question: "what if we could not fail?" </div>
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- a what if technique is to create a prototype - a sketch, video, explanation, model, anything that can represent the idea in a preliminary form. </div>
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- share ideas earlier, so others can help with the process!</div>
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- use these ideas to try a test-and-learn process BEFORE implementing a whole new idea</div>
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- find others who want to answer the same What If questions as you so that you can collaborate.</div>
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- don't hoard your beautiful question!</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chapter Four: Questioning in Business</div>
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Disruptive innovation - questions of purpose</div>
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"What if our company didn't exist?"</div>
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"What if we were kicked out of the company, what would the new CEO (coach) do?"</div>
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"What should we stop doing?"</div>
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What is your tennis ball? - the thing that pulls you as much as a dog chasing a tennis ball...</div>
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Often questions are better thought of alone...by some.</div>
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In "question storming" there are more possibilities - generating fifth to seventy-five questions is best. The group will usually briefly stall at 25 questions - push through this wall!</div>
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Then narrow to three (as before)</div>
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- HMW - the How Might We questioning framing idea</div>
<div class="p1">
- rather than using "can we" or "should we", "might we" encourages creativity.</div>
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-- the HOW part assumes that there are solutions out there - it provides confidence. MIGHT says we can put ideas out there that might work or might not - either way, it's okay. And the WE part says we're going to do it together and build on each other's ideas</div>
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- should mission statements be mission questions?</div>
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*how might we be the best program on the entire continent?</div>
<div class="p1">
- keep questioning your question statement - does it still make sense?, are we living up to it?, it is growing and as we still moving forward?, are we all in this together?</div>
<div class="p1">
-- another way of looking a this:</div>
<div class="p1">
• What are we doing?</div>
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• why are we doing it?</div>
<div class="p1">
• how might we do it better?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
How might we create a culture of inquiry?</div>
<div class="p1">
Be careful of encouraging people to ask questions and then dumping the solution on them, in addition to their regular duties...</div>
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Tell people to bring in questions as a part of the interview process </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Chapter Five: Questioning for Life</div>
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"Live the questions" ~ Rilke</div>
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"What is your sentence?" ~ Daniel Pink</div>
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"Climb the mountain not to plant your flag, but to embrace the challenge, enjoy the air, and behold the view. Climb it so you can see the world, not so the world can see you." ~ David McCullough</div>
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• why am I climbing this mountain in the first place?</div>
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• what is waiting for me at the top?</div>
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• what am I going to do once I get there?</div>
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• am I enjoying the climb itself? Should I slow down, speed up?</div>
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• what am I leaving behind down below?</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Why are you evading inquiry?</div>
<div class="p1">
• questioning is seen as counter productive. It's the answers that most people are focussed on finding...because people think they will improve life</div>
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• the right time for asking fundamental questions never seems to present itself</div>
<div class="p1">
• knowing the right questions to ask is difficult (so better not to ask at all)</div>
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• perhaps most significant: what if we find we have no good answers to the important questions we raise.</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Process is key! You don't just need answers...</div>
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We have to construct meaning in our lives - better to ask "why should I do X?" "Is it worth my one and effort to do Y?" And even better , "when I look back in five years, which of these options will make the better story?"</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
If you force yourself to sit with a problem or topic and to try to think of questions you will come up with many. The challenge is to think ABOUT those questions - culling the best ones, improving them and figuring out how you might act on them.</div>
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What if we step back or unplug?</div>
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Example of technology free Saturdays...just get to sit with a question rather than looking up an answer...</div>
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"Where is my place to withdraw and to think?"</div>
<div class="p1">
"When is my tech Shabbat?"</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Start with what you already have - not by asking questions about what you don't have.</div>
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Answer instead, "what am I grateful for?" </div>
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Ask, "what did I love doing as a child?" - the things we loved doing then often still give us pleasure later in life or we can update those things to things we like today.</div>
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Ask, "what am I doing when I feel most beautiful?"</div>
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"What do I find myself doing?"</div>
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"When you're in a bookstore, what section are you drawn to?"</div>
<div class="p1">
"Why do I seem to 'shine' when doing certain things? What is it about those activities/places that brings out the best in me?"</div>
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"What if I could find a way to incorporate those interests/activities, or some aspect of them, into my life more? And maybe even into my work?"</div>
<div class="p1">
"How might I go about doing that?"</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Make one small change - ask yourself, "what if I make one small change?"</div>
<div class="p1">
- when you make one small change it can breed confidence for more changes.</div>
<div class="p1">
Ask yourself, "what if you could not fail?"</div>
<div class="p1">
- eliminates fear. We can also teach to embrace failure...it's like checking off a box...</div>
<div class="p1">
Ask questions about failure...</div>
<div class="p1">
Ie, "how do I distinguish between acceptable failure and unacceptable failure?"</div>
<div class="p1">
Another question could ask, "what if I fail-how will I recover?"</div>
<div class="p1">
Or alternatively:</div>
<div class="p1">
If the worst happens, how could I cope?</div>
<div class="p1">
What if I do nothing?</div>
<div class="p1">
What if I succeed?</div>
<div class="p1">
And</div>
<div class="p1">
"What's truly worth doing, whether you fail or succeed?"</div>
<div class="p1">
In life, ask questions that appeal to both parties of opposing viewpoints - i.e, between gun owners and non-owners: do you care about gun violence? Are you for gun responsibility? - both parties answered yes to those questions. Perhaps questioning can find a common viewpoint rather than always separating into opposing sides. (reminiscent of using statistics to prove a point, perhaps we can use questioning to get people to agree on a commonality of a point...find at least 1% to agree on on a certain topic and then agree on it 100%). </div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
Follow someone you disagree with on Twitter :). Try asking questions of those with whom we disagree. Why might they see the issue this way? Why do I see it differently? What assumptions are we operating under?</div>
<div class="p1">
What are the odds I'm wrong? *probably a very good question for an overly positive person...</div>
<div class="p2">
<br /></div>
<div class="p1">
How will you find your beautiful question? </div>
<div class="p1">
Articulating a bold personal question! </div>
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Choosing a question - find the one that resonates....</div>
<div class="p1">
"How do we continually find inspiration so we can inspire others?"</div>
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<br /></div>
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Authors referenced for question research (I do this so I can do more follow up on my own):</div>
<div class="p1">
Dan Rothstein & Luz Santana of The Right Question Institute</div>
<div class="p1">
Polly LaBarre -HBR</div>
<div class="p1">
Ken Heilman - author</div>
<div class="p1">
David Cooperrider - Case Western - theory of " appreciative inquiry"</div>
<div class="p1">
Joichi Ito - director of MIT Media Lab</div>
<div class="p1">
Stuart Firestein - author</div>
<div class="p1">
John Seely Brown </div>
<div class="p1">
Gretchen Rubin - "The Happiness Project"</div>
<div class="p1">
<a href="http://web.basadur.com/publications" target="_blank">Min Basadur</a> - <a href="http://www.creativeeducationfoundation.org/what-we-do/cpsi-conference/what-is-cpsi" target="_blank">Creative Problem Solving Institute of Buffalo, NY</a></div>
<div class="p1">
Graham Wallas</div>
<div class="p1">
Tiffany Schlain - film called "Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks"</div>
<div class="p1">
Paul Harris - "Trusting What You're Told"</div>
<div class="p1">
Dennie Palmer Wolf - education prof at Brown wrote "The Art of Questioning"</div>
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Robert Burton - "On Being Certain"</div>
<div class="p1">
Paul Bennett - blog called <a href="http://curiositychronicles.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">The Curiosity Chronicles </a></div>
<div class="p1">
David Kord Murray - "Borrowing Brilliance"</div>
<div class="p1">
Chen-Bo Zhong - UofT Rotman School - research on creative and associative thinking</div>
<div class="p1">
- Christenson - The Innovator's Dilemma</div>
<div class="p1">
- Sidney Parnes of creative problem solving institute in Buffalo</div>
<div class="p1">
Tal Ben-Shahar - two books: Happier and <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Being-Happy-Perfect-Richer-Happier/dp/0071746617" target="_blank">Being Happy</a></div>
<div class="p1">
Roko Belic - documentary called "<a href="http://www.thehappymovie.com/film/" target="_blank">Happy</a>"</div>
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<br /></div>
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My own questions:</div>
<div class="p1">
• what if we could develop a questioning place to think about deep, personal questions...is Quora cutting it?<br />
• what if we could then share this "big think" somewhere?</div>
<br />
Thanks to Warren Berger - I thoroughly enjoyed the fruits of your labours! Please, read the book. It is a lovely journey and will cause you to think so much!<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pucHF50Md2s/VKWeRcfrmvI/AAAAAAAABVE/ZA11CD8TSRU/s1600/Ask%2Byourself%2B2015.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pucHF50Md2s/VKWeRcfrmvI/AAAAAAAABVE/ZA11CD8TSRU/s1600/Ask%2Byourself%2B2015.png" height="425" width="640" /></a></div>
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Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-7904411131995534322014-05-29T09:52:00.000-07:002014-05-29T09:52:30.239-07:00#QWR secret of success<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AanYWQQtZ4Y/Uu7A6RORo_I/AAAAAAAABKs/NpF2SUWbF5w/s1600/Be+ready+for+success.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AanYWQQtZ4Y/Uu7A6RORo_I/AAAAAAAABKs/NpF2SUWbF5w/s1600/Be+ready+for+success.png" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
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Just felt the need to share this again.Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-46496190320203390612014-04-23T09:56:00.000-07:002014-04-23T09:58:30.549-07:00Slideshare posting...After finishing up the last MOOC on Personal Branding for Educators, I thought I'd take a moment to share a few chunks of information online. It seems after many years of attending conferences, teaching classes, facilitating coaching course and, of course, coaching, I've got a lot of information accumulated on my hard drive. Might as well share that information, right? So, I started with <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/?ss">Slideshare</a> where I had previously shared one slide deck for my social media course last year.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, that first slide deck was really only labelled for the class (IDC4U) and certainly didn't have any information that would have generated any interest from a search engine or otherwise. So, I took it off the upload file...maybe I'll reupload the next time I teach the course....<br />
<br />
This time, I decided to share some info on an area that is a particularly hot topic in sport across the world on Talent ID. There is a ton of quantitative information out there for individual sport Talent ID but not so much on Team Selection for team sport. This is an area I've been facilitating in the Canadian Sport Institute - Ontario for a few years and I had a (long) PowerPoint that I thought people might find interesting. So, I decided to give Slideshare another try and to upload that presentation, which I usually do over the course of an eight hour day.<br />
<br />
In any case, I had no idea how much interest the Slideshare slide deck on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/bethbarz/talent-identification-and-selection-in-elite-sport-coaching">Talent Identification and Selection in Elite Sport</a> would generate. There have been 400 views in just over two days and this was definitely beyond the interest I'd expected. Really glad that there is so much interest in Talent ID and that for team sports that the selection is also an idea that carries significant weight. It was great even to get some verbal feedback from a coaching colleague yesterday! There are certainly a multitude of areas to consider as a coach and it's a great topic to discuss for a few hours.<br />
<br />
I'm interested in feedback if you'd care to share - the slidedeck can be found at <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/bethbarz/talent-identification-and-selection-in-elite-sport-coaching" target="_blank">Talent Identification & Selection in Elite Sport</a>. Comment here on the blog or below the presentation in the new window.<br />
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<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-68619485511350237942014-04-21T14:04:00.000-07:002014-04-21T14:08:39.015-07:00MOOC success!<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The MOOC experiment was excellent. In fact, I've already signed up for two more. One I've just completed with Sidneyeve Matrix at Queen's University - it's called CDS605 Personal Branding for Educators. Sidneyeve is an incredibly connected social media guru who happens to have her ear to the ground on everything digital it seems. The other doesn't start until September (which is truly terrible timing), however, the course title certainly evokes connection to an area of passion in teaching; it's called "<a href="https://www.coursera.org/course/sports">Sports and Society</a>" with Dr. Orin Starn. I'm on the watchlist for this one and will connect as soon as enrolment permits.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Regarding the course with Cathy N. Davidson called "<a href="https://class.coursera.org/highered-001"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">The History and Future of (Mostly)
Higher Education</span></a>: Or, How We Can Unlearn Our Old Patterns and
Relearn for a More Successful, Fruitful, Satisfying, Productive, Humane, Happy,
Beautiful, Socially-conscious, Socially-Engaged Future." I
thoroughly enjoyed it. Granted, I did think I was going to finish the course
with all the assignments/discussions/annotations done. The optimist in me
always thinks I'm going to get it all done; the realist in me really needs to
give the optimist a kick to think a little more realistically...so, I didn't
quite get things done to the level I would have liked but I did get everything
I wanted out of the course. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
So, my thoughts to those who are taking a MOOC in future would be this. Make
sure you set some minimum expectations for what you'd like to learn and
accomplish during the course that may not be everything that will earn a
certificate of completion. By all means, attempt to complete everything and
enjoy what you do along the way. I did that for the first week and was able to
take something out of each portion I completed or participated in. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
The second week started off reasonably well. Then some unexpected life news
happened so I wasn't able to complete the rest as thoroughly as I had planned.
However, having completed the first week's worth of work, I felt like I could
prioritize the rest of the course and still feel like I was getting lots of new
learning and good reminders out of it, too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br />
Perhaps if you are unsure whether a MOOC is for you, it would be a good idea to
try everything that is available in the first week and then to reevaluate the
most important aspects based on the course content and life as it happens. Hope
this is helpful!</span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-56276346393332013612014-02-02T14:00:00.002-08:002014-02-02T14:00:52.641-08:00My MOOC experimentAfter many exposures to the concept of MOOCs and other knowledge sharing platforms, I thought it was time to do a MOOC myself. Major influences in this were <a href="https://twitter.com/courosa">Alec Courosa</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/sidneyeve">Sidneyeve Matrix</a> through her Twitter account and her online course CDS502 (Online Strategy) through Queen's University that I was fortunate enough to participate in last year. As well, teaching an interdisciplinary studies high school course on social media last year has very much piqued my curiousity about learning online and in trying to keep up with all the changes to digital literacies.<br />
<br />
The MOOC that caught my interest was <a href="https://twitter.com/CathyNDavidson">Cathy Davidson</a>'s course from Duke University - of course, the possibility of being connected to the Cameron Crazies was a ridiculous but fun idea - called <a href="https://class.coursera.org/highered-001">The History and Future of (Mostly) High Education</a>: Or, How We Can Unlearn Our Old Patterns and Relearn for a More Successful, Fruitful, Satisfying, Productive, Humane, Happy, Beautiful, Socially-conscious, Socially-Engaged Future. Needless to say, the English teacher in me was immediately attracted to the title! The hashtag on Twitter is #FutureEd if you are interested in joining or following the conversation.<br />
<br />
Six weeks is the length of the course and the video lecture style is both engaging and very well put together with animated "chalkboards" summarizing Prof Davidson's main points. For a visual learner like me who likes to take notes while I read, this has been excellent. In fact, I'd love to know what program they used to put the videos together to make them professional but (hopefully) not too onerous. In this course there is not necessarily an emphasis on assignments and achievement on those assignments - these can be done and one would assume that the learning would be more solidified through the course by completing the assignments. The assignments are purely voluntary which appealed to me since in Ontario we are just starting up a new semester and I still have my many other involvements in rugby to deal with in life as well. This was helpful as I want to complete the course but wasn't sure of the workload and balancing with these other commitments. The fact that a student can earn a certificate of achievement simply by completing quiz questions as they come up on each video was enough for me to be able to say I've completed this within reasonable expectations.<br />
<br />
The question at the end of the first intro assignments leave multiple possibilities. I did the quiz which leads to the certificate - not sure if my motivation was to earn the certificate or to actually see what I had learned. Also, there is an essay assignment that will be peer reviewed on having to "unlearn" something. I'd like to do the assignment, however, I think that the time I've spent on this blog may preclude me from meeting the deadline. There are also other participatory assignments the most notable of which asks "who is your favourite teacher?"I do like this question, and I've answered it on numerous occasions in my coaching development education; only, I've done it on paper and not on video as the assignment suggests. In the MOOC, the best part is that I know I've done it and it doesn't matter if I submit the assignment. Even better since it just gives me a chance to solidify and remember the learning I've done and then mentally add to it with people who have influenced me since. And there are many! I am so lucky to work with people at school and in rugby who teach me by challenging, cajoling and straight up telling me to learn.<br />
<br />
Anyone can be a teacher and anyone can be a learner. I LOVE that this course is encouraging teachers and anyone who wants to learn to learn. Learning for learning's sake is such a wonderful and laudable goal. Now, if only this course will help me discover the secret to making sure that others feel the same way!<br />
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<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-50546367978200719592014-01-29T19:17:00.001-08:002014-01-29T19:17:47.289-08:00More books for coaches or my reading list from 2014A few more books for coaches and teachers that were part of 2013's reading pile:<br />
<br />
<i>Quiet</i> - <a href="https://twitter.com/susancain">Susan Cain</a><br />
<br />
Ever wondered how to connect with the introverts on your team? Or wondered why some people just aren't that into group work in a classroom? Or wondered if you have some introverted tendencies yourself as a coach or teacher? This is the book for you!<br />
<br />
<i>Quiet</i> is illuminating in the sense that it give a powerful voice to those who don't always feel that using theirs is the most necessary idea. As an extrovert, it certainly helpful me understand about how to encourage the hard work, idea generation and focus that introverts bring to the table with others. We just need to shut up, give those introverts time to speak and then listen!<br />
<br />
This was brought to my attention by a former athlete of ours at Queen's who self identifies as an introvert and it was on my list for a long time before I finally got to it. All of a sudden I feel more equipped to work with and to help introverts harness the strengths of their default operational mode. The world in general needs to recognize the creative ability and the depth of investigation that introverts can go to when given the opportunity!<br />
<br />
And, if you're into TEDtalks - here's Cain's called <a href="http://new.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts">"The Power of Introverts."</a><br />
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<i>To Sell is Human</i> - <a href="https://twitter.com/DanielPink">Daniel Pink</a><br />
<br />
It's no secret that I'm a fan of Pink's writing and was thrilled to see him speak in Ottawa back in fall 2011. His latest book published in early 2013, <i>To Sell is Human</i>, is another winner. He claims that 8 of 10 of us workers are salespeople. It's true that teachers and coaches are salespeople in that we sell ideas, we sell and help build the concepts of self-confidence, passion for learning, dedication, teamwork and all those things that allow athletes and students to be the best people they can be once they leave our programs or schools.<br />
<br />
Let's face it - we can't get buy in from our athletes and students if we can't sell the ideas or team culture that we create. Pink's book can help us do it more effectively.<br />
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<i>Smarter Than You Think</i> - <a href="https://twitter.com/pomeranian99">Clive Thompson</a><br />
<br />
My airport treat is a copy of <i>Wired</i> magazine whenever I am travelling. This is where I discovered Clive Thompson's clever and informative reading and was fortunate to receive the book as an unexpected Christmas gift.<br />
<br />
Thompson's argument is that technology is making us smarter and may actually end up rewiring our brains to make us even "smarter." There are plenty of people who say that the information age and it's advancements will set us up for failure but Thompson makes the case for technology in all it's new and unknown ways. In a sense, the book doesn't seem to connect at all with coaching and might seem that there are lose links to teaching. However, for teachers, this book is a must-read and there is an entire chapter dedicated to the technology movements in schools. Also, it just asks readers to thoughtfully consider that change might just be a good thing...and that is what every teacher and coach should encourage.<br />
<br />
<i>Selling the Dream</i> - <a href="https://twitter.com/THNKenCampbell">Ken Campbell</a> with Jim Parcells<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
While I didn't find the information in the book earth-shattering, Campbell does come up with some impressive numbers and statistics to support his ideas on hockey at a grassroots level in Canada. The message here is that we're in big trouble if we keep doing what we're doing. Money is what drives hockey development in Canada and mainly those middle to high income families will be the ones who can afford to help develop a raw but possibly talented teenager. Lower income families and those who are from outside major urban areas will be shut out of the development system. And some Canadian parents are making mind-boggling financial and life decisions around the minute possibility of their kids either getting a hockey scholarship or making the NHL or national teams. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Honestly, I don't know if I would have finished it if I hadn't wanted to use the book as a part of my Sport & Society class at SHS. However, it would be a great primer for those just starting out in the hockey machine or those who may want to justify avoiding it (and putting their kids in mini-rugby instead). Oops, just can't help to advocate for fun, games and great LTAD!</div>
<br />
<i>The Power of Habit</i> - <a href="https://twitter.com/cduhigg">Charles Duhigg</a><br />
<br />
I really enjoyed the organization of Duhigg's book and the research he put into each chapter. First, he starts with how some people have changed their own habits and then he explains exactly how his Cue-Reward-Routine concept makes it eas(ier) to make changes to habits. If only he talked about cookies less, I may have not craved them so much when I was reading!<br />
<br />
And, there is a teacher's guide (thanks, Charles!). I'm working on putting this into our Grade 12 College English at SHS since the awareness about habits is not always as obvious for teenagers as one might think. We all have habits we enjoy and that we'd really rather change. Seems reasonable to talk about it in a classroom and maybe combine the use of technology into helping us make a positive beahviour change...maybe we can use both Thompson's and Duhigg's expertise at once. By the way, they are both highly engaged in Twitter and will have a chat if you have something interesting to comment on or to ask.<br />
<br />
I think that's it - hope this is informative and that you can find something else interesting to read in the near future that helps to make you that much better in your chosen field.<br />
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<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-73352696884465684132013-04-24T18:52:00.002-07:002013-04-24T18:52:14.437-07:00New photoquote<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8wjCzen4i5Q/UXiMCQ4epzI/AAAAAAAABEI/yD7Yv1IQ-tY/s1600/Seek+wisdom.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8wjCzen4i5Q/UXiMCQ4epzI/AAAAAAAABEI/yD7Yv1IQ-tY/s400/Seek+wisdom.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Original photo information: Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/26051251@N06/8392422653/">Raymond Larose</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com/">Compfight</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/">cc</a>
Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-7698580109009022532013-04-18T09:58:00.004-07:002013-04-18T09:58:48.099-07:00This made me laugh...but only sort of...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pxkIHms40ds/UXAmPReyn1I/AAAAAAAABD4/ggt_bADsfBA/s1600/Teaching.....jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pxkIHms40ds/UXAmPReyn1I/AAAAAAAABD4/ggt_bADsfBA/s320/Teaching.....jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-6561785229654294602013-04-17T07:56:00.001-07:002013-04-17T07:56:47.218-07:00SHS Rugby ClothingHi SHS Rugby ladies,<br />
<br />
Here is an example of the SHS rugby clothing:<br />
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M2gbbT6lSDs/UW63R52h8JI/AAAAAAAABDo/uPCmXHekr9M/s1600/SHS+Rugby+Clothing+2013.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="494" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M2gbbT6lSDs/UW63R52h8JI/AAAAAAAABDo/uPCmXHekr9M/s640/SHS+Rugby+Clothing+2013.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Forms are due on Monday next week (April 22).Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-6388176090755139162013-03-29T09:04:00.002-07:002013-03-29T09:04:40.570-07:00Guest Post: A rant on Storify TOS
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<i><span lang="EN-CA">The following is a guest post by Jeff
Lyons, a current student in my IDC4U class.</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Recently, I was tasked with creating a page
with “<a href="http://storify.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Storify</span></a>” for a school assignment. Now, I'm
always leery of signing up for new websites or services, as I highly value both
my security and the amount of space in my inbox. Nevertheless, I signed up with
Storify, handing out my email as requested, and began amassing the links and
information required for my topic, despite the difficulties involved (my topic
was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_rights_management"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">DRM</span></a>
and Piracy in games, and the school board blocks most gaming news websites and
blogs.) Everything was going along fine, until I signed off for the day and
returned the next. When I went to edit and format my page, I was greeted with
this:</span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VJFHtv8F34w/UVW7H-wzt7I/AAAAAAAABDE/5NDYKrP3X4E/s1600/Connect+to+Twitter.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VJFHtv8F34w/UVW7H-wzt7I/AAAAAAAABDE/5NDYKrP3X4E/s400/Connect+to+Twitter.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA">Connect with my Twitter account? You mean
the one I don't have? The one you never mentioned before? Well that's just...<i>brilliant</i>.
I hope the dripping sarcasm is oozing through your monitor right now.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">I realize, I'm the last of a dying breed,
that most people have Twitter these days, and spend hours on end tweeting to
their hearts content. Myself, I don't see the need. I'm just one person. I
don't have news or updates to post concerning a product I'm working on. I don't
need to inform people of what towns I'll be performing in, what times, and how
much a T-shirt will cost. And I certainly don't have a group of staffers
crafting my next political barb. If I want to stay in contact with those close
to me, I'll contact them over Facebook, or give them a call, or <b>gasp </b><i>have
a face-to-face </i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">conversation</span></a><i>
with them</i>. But I digress. This isn't about me not needing to use Twitter.
This is about Storify springing it on me. Not once in the account creation
process, or in the terms of use, does it mention Twitter. Not once. And if it
requires something, surely it should notify the user of that <i>beforehand</i>,
shouldn't it? If I go out to buy a game, I can look up the minimum system
requirements before forking over $60 (an overly high price, but that's for
another day) for a game my computer can't run. If it's multiplayer, or runs on
a content-delivery system such as <a href="http://store.steampowered.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Steam</span></a>,
or <a href="http://store.origin.com/store/ea/home/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">Origin</span></a>, it'll mention that
an internet connection is required, and that an account on those services is as
well, for the latter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">So why are they telling me <i>after</i> I
start using Storify that I need to also give them my Twitter information? Why
do they <i>require</i> it in the first place? Is Twitter integration mandatory?
Would they, if I made a Twitter account for them, tell me to give them my
Facebook username and password at a later date? (You can choose to use your Facebook
or Twitter accounts to sign up for Storify, but I prefer to keep my
educational, work, and social lives as separate as humanly possible) And it's
not just because I don't have or want a Twitter account. It's not just because
they require one for use.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">It's because they spring it on you like
this. “Oh hi, there! We see you're enjoying our product! Now, if you want to
continue using it, fork over your info!” I mean, if they do this now, what's
next? My real-world address? My Social Insurance Number? They can't even say it
was in the fine print. I checked. There is <i>no</i> fine print.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2U2wjCOwQsY/UVW7ILFY-YI/AAAAAAAABDI/t2PnI7V56kE/s1600/Storify+TOS.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="110" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2U2wjCOwQsY/UVW7ILFY-YI/AAAAAAAABDI/t2PnI7V56kE/s400/Storify+TOS.png" width="400" /></a><br clear="ALL" />
<span lang="EN-CA"> </span></div>
<br clear="all" />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Okay, maybe there is. My mistake. But does
it mention requiring other accounts anywhere? Nope. Not anywhere else in the
TOS, either. Ctrl+F is quite useful in that regard.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">You know, this is a really shady way of
operating, this cutting the user off suddenly and demanding account
information. It's basically holding the account for ransom. And I don't
negotiate with terrorists. I guess it's a nice ironic twist that my chosen topic
was DRM. Most current forms of DRM are really scummy too, and end up preventing
legitimate customers from playing more than it does the pirates. Well, no
matter. I have other options, other steps to complete the assignment. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">And Storify? You just lost yourself a user.</span></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-76361997219017393882013-03-29T08:23:00.004-07:002013-03-29T08:23:55.504-07:00Guest Post: Overview of Athletic Therapy
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Hi
everyone, my name is Steacy Huff and I am currently in Mrs. Barz's me and the
meme technology class. For part of an assignment we are doing I wrote a blog on
a brief overview of the profession of athletic therapy. I am an aspiring
athletic therapy student and wanted to educate people on this profession as I
think it is very interesting and something everyone should be educated about.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"> Many
people are familiar with with the profession of physiotherapy. Often people
attend physiotherapy after obtaining
an injury to get back into the sport or activity they were playing before. But
what about the profession of athletic therapy? Many people are not quite as
familiar with athletic therapy as they are with physiotherapy. There are many similarities between the
two professions that often people view them as the same thing. Carla Brash, who
is a certified athletic therapist at Kingston Athletic Therapy Centre,
describes athletic therapy as “finding the root of the cause and treating it
therefore indirectly treating the injury.” For more information visit their
website at <a href="http://www.kingstonatc.com/"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.kingstonatc.com/</span></a>
or follow them on Twitter <a href="https://twitter.com/KingstonATC">@KingstonATC</a>.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA">Both athletic
therapists and physiotherapists use similar methods to treat injuries but
athletic therapy is a more hands on practice. Some athletic therapists use a
technique called visceral treatment. When using this technique, the therapists
releases the tension that is created within the organs of a person body caused
from every day stresses. Many people are not aware that the organs within their
body can become tight. Organs, such as the kidneys, attach to the spine through
the viscera. The viscera with in your body can become tight due to everyday
stresses, just as your muscles become tight after you workout for the fist time
in a few weeks. Due to the visceral attachment on the spine, this can lead to
low back pain if your kidneys and viscera become tight. Visceral treatment was
developed by a french osteopath and physical therapist named Jean-Pierre
Barral. For more information on visceral treatment visit his website as <a href="http://www.barralinstitute.com/about/vm.php"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.barralinstitute.com/about/vm.php</span></a>.
</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-CA"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-CA"> If
the athletic therapy interests you, I would encourage you to check out the
Canadian Athletic Therapy Association website at <a href="http://www.athletictherapy.org/en/index.aspx"><span style="color: windowtext; text-decoration: none; text-underline: none;">http://www.athletictherapy.org/en/index.aspx</span></a>
where you can find information on the profession and find a certified athletic
therapist near you.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<!--EndFragment-->Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-17064774625093885972013-02-03T19:25:00.002-08:002013-02-03T19:31:11.841-08:00Photoquote<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
The entire premise of my IDC3C Sport & Society course:</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yvbkWYjZhVA/UQ8mDaq8MPI/AAAAAAAABAA/Xl3p9trhJ3Y/s1600/Sport+is+a+bridge.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yvbkWYjZhVA/UQ8mDaq8MPI/AAAAAAAABAA/Xl3p9trhJ3Y/s400/Sport+is+a+bridge.png" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Orginal photo from: Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/74104887@N06/7496157426/">Christian Bardenhorst</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com/">Compfight</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/">cc</a></span>
<br />
<br />
It's not about fighting in hockey. It's about striving to improve as human beings; our qualities, our interactions and our abilities. Sport is just one small, wonderful area where we can do all of these big things.Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-24151024939858803812013-02-02T20:11:00.002-08:002013-02-02T20:11:53.614-08:00When people ask me if I'm a teacher...When people ask me if I'm a teacher, I'm usually happy to respond that I am. The recent political unrest has made me a bit more reticent to respond in the affirmative, however, most people seem to still realize that we're trying to do the right thing.<br />
<br />
I realize I'm very fortunate to be a teacher. Thanks to those who share parts of their day with me everyday: students, all support staff and my teaching colleagues at SHS, our admin, those retirees who keep coming back to make Sydenham an even more vibrant place and the occasional parent who checks in.<br />
<br />
As second semester is about to start and I'm madly preparing, I just wanted to take a moment to be thankful for all those people who make my job as great as it is!<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D4oqc1OP_5k/UQ3jY2DVB5I/AAAAAAAAA_s/6SxhR1RI6No/s1600/I+teach+what's+your+superpower%3f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-D4oqc1OP_5k/UQ3jY2DVB5I/AAAAAAAAA_s/6SxhR1RI6No/s320/I+teach+what's+your+superpower%3f.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: xx-small;">Photo Credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28430474@N05/6109506769/">Krissy.Venosdale</a> via <a href="http://compfight.com/">Compfight</a> <a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/">cc</a></span>
Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-30442263298788588922013-01-29T14:38:00.001-08:002013-01-29T14:42:06.006-08:00Marking...a rant?I know, theoretically, that marking is a valuable exercise.<br />
<br />
I sat in on a webinar last night hosted by Alec Couros where the guest speaker Dave Cormier (a prof from UPEI - @davecormier) was talking about MOOCs; yep, had to look it up, too - the acronym is Massive Open Online Course (thank you, Wikipedia). He shared an anecdote about running into a student that had been in a MOOC that he was teaching. The student mentioned that he was disappointed in the course because he hadn't finished it and hadn't received a final grade. Nevermind the fact that he didn't finish because he met another student in the same course and through the course of this meeting they went on to produce some other cool stuff as a direct result of their involvement in the course in the first place. The student could only focus on the fact that he hadn't finished the course due to the fact that he hadn't received a final grade.<br />
<br />
So, that begs the question. Is it more important to create the environment where learning is a process and an exciting starting point? Or, is simply achieving the final objective, a final grade based on assessment through the course, enough?<br />
<br />
I think most educators when asked theoretically would say that it is most important to create a learning environment that allows students to think, create and to be curious. However, at every semester's end I find myself frustrated with the fact that I am assessing only on the student's performance at mundane tasks that I have asked them to perform. In some cases, I've been able to allow students create their own mundane tasks or even to create a unit, however, everything always comes down to assessment, evaluation and a final mark.<br />
<br />
And, man, that just burns me.<br />
<br />
So, I'm going to try to figure out some other ways to address it. Anyone have any to share?Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-55347451437355630492012-09-26T08:37:00.003-07:002012-09-26T08:37:51.848-07:00Waiting for game dayOne of the most profound emotions I've felt this season has been impatience. Not with athletes or coaching staff or administration. They have all been exceptional - as usual. It's odd, since as a coach I've always felt like slowing things down was the best option since we usually want MORE time to work on strategies and tactics before the actual performance demands of a game.<br />
<br />
No, this season has been different for many reasons. Not the least of which is because we're so darn excited to play! At times I think that it would be nice to slow things down and to savour the moments I treasure with players - a chat on the bus, the brillance of seeing a player be successful in the application of a new skill, the last pass before the try, the redshirts working their tails off so they can be on the field next year, an in-depth conversation about strategy with one of my coaching colleagues - and then I think of how far away game day is and just want to hit the fast forward button.<br />
<br />
And, man...it's only Wednesday....<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-71287291521219080622012-05-06T19:37:00.002-07:002012-05-06T19:38:03.332-07:00Learning Goals and Exit Cards<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
Learning goals seem to be the fastest growing classroom tool
in our school board these days. I’ve used them at the beginning and end of
PowerPoint presentations – particularly when the language is new and the
concepts are dense – and I’ve tinkered with developing them along with students
before completing a new reading or discussing a new concept. Students have also posed questions as learning goals on several occasions and that has worked
quite successfully. However, I still thought that I wasn’t always hitting the mark
when it came to using learning goals as effectively as I could with students. </div>
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<br /></div>
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The other day I was chatting on the phone at my colleague’s
desk and I saw a chart that not only outlined learning goals but also allowed
students to organize their thoughts correlated to each goal. It also created a
ranking system for the students to circle what they believed was their level of
understanding of the learning goal by the end of class. Conveniently, this
formed a built-in exit card that required almost no extra work to set up. </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Added to this, I had recently discovered a brief <a href="http://www.playthegame.org/uploads/media/Xiong_Huan_-_The_changing_of_the_Chinese_Government_s_Sports_policy_Post-Beijing_2008.pdf">PowerPoint presentation online that outlined the changes in the Chinese sport policy</a> since the Second World War. Since we are in the middle of a unit looking at the
Olympics and international sport, there was a link here that could also support
how we understand the changes in the Canadian sport system that have occurred
through programs like Own the Podium and Quest for Gold and thereby lead to a
focus on high performance and elite sport. The challenge was to make the
information on the seemingly distant Chinese sport system accessible to
Canadian students and to create some take away points for these students so the
whole lesson was actually related to what we’ve been discussing. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fast forward to seeing the learning goals chart and then
taking a stab at making my own chart, complete with the information I wanted
them to be able to leave with by the end of class. I found the five key points
that I felt were most important and created the goals around these points. These
became the first column, then the second column was space for students to write
supporting points on each of the key points and then a third column was added
for a self-evaluation on a five point scale (1 for lowest and 5 for highest) of
learning at the end of class.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It was a little awkward working from two documents – the
slides from the PowerPoint and the learning goals chart – and overall I think
we got a good result for this first time use. I continually asked questions
about the information as we went through it like, “What learning goal could
this fall under?” or “Does this meet any of our learning goal criteria?” which
was a little more structured than I would have liked…however, I felt it
necessary to help create the link between what we were learning and what the
outcome goals were. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finally, students were able to evaluate themselves on the
“scale” of their learning – a sort of metacognitive measurement – in the last
column of the learning goals chart. In a totally unplanned moment, I collected
the learning goals sheets at the end of class and leafed through them
afterwards. Almost all students had completed the sheet and had evaluated metacognitive
portion on the strength of their understanding at the end of class. Voila, exit
card! And, I was able to quickly see that the majority of students had
comfortably grasped four of the five learning goals. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I handed back the learning goals sheets at the beginning of
the next day, addressed the fuzzy fifth goal that most of the class rated as
less understood and then went on to step into the next lesson. I definitely
plan on using a learning goals chart again in the future as they helped me make
some tough concepts seem simple in the class and made the learning more clear
for the students.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One final thought is that this type of learning is exactly
what I do when I’m coaching, although not with pen and paper. We start an
activity, we define the goals that we need to achieve in order to be successful
and then we evaluate ourselves on these goals through key points or indicators when
we play during practice and in games. What I can’t figure out is why it took me
so long to apply them in the classroom rather than just on the rugby pitch!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-41550662794654738792012-04-24T06:43:00.004-07:002012-04-24T06:43:36.382-07:00When game sense coaching doesn't make as much sense...With the crazy change in the weather this week we've seen everything from snow, sleet, rain and some just generally miserable weather. Although I believe that coaching with a game sense approach is by far the best way to coach, I think I have found when it doesn't work as well, too.<br />
<br />
We had to cancel a high school game yesterday since it snowed in the morning and the weather was at about 4 degrees Celsius for most of the day. The concern was that the athletes would be freezing after doing a full warm-up and then playing the game and that the field would be torn up if we played three rugby games on it in the day. Instead, we decided to do a short, one hour practice that would get the athletes out of the elements in only an hour and would be a high intensity and fast paced practice in order to stay warm.<br />
<br />
Brilliantly, not a lot of the athletes dressed for the weather. One would assume, I think, that since the games were not postponed until after student arrived at school that morning that all the athletes would have brought their warm rugby clothing with them. However, that seemed not to be the case! We still have some work to do on that front.<br />
<br />
In any case, I don't get a lot of opportunity to coach the guys at the school so we just held a practice for the boys teams. Many of the guys have had only moderate opportunity to actually play and therefore have fairly limited understanding of the game due to rugby being a late entry sport. We often think that telling athletes what to do is a better way for the athletes to learn the game and so far this approach was frustrating for a number of the athletes. However, we need to trust that the players will learn as they play (experiential learning) and that we as coaches must help them recall and highlight what they have learned.<br />
<br />
Given the weather, we had to keep the practice moving at all times. I also wanted players to leave with a few key lessons from the time they spent on the field. The two strategies I used were to keep the game moving in the down times (ball out of bounds, knock on) by counting down and to keep the team questioning conversations to VERY brief time intervals (we really talked for 30-90 seconds before going back to the game). To keep the game moving, I had to be quite verbally involved in the practice so by counting down 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 and then saying 'go' the athletes weren't over-thinking what they needed to do, they were just doing it. They were also keeping (marginally) warmer!<br />
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When we wanted to make a point, we called the athletes together for a very brief questioning period where we highlighted a few skills throughout the practice. We looked at working together in support distance for offloads, working on when and how to kick strategically and how to maul effectively. All this in a 45 minute practice! That being said, I think that the learning would have been even more effective if we had had more time to question and demonstrate the parts of the whole that the players were missing.<br />
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In the whole-part-whole sense of games sense coaching, we were really only able to cover the 'whole' and really scratched the surface when it came to the 'part.' I would have preferred to have more time to repeat some of the learning in part before going back to the whole as the learning would have been more clear and solidified for the athletes.<br />
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All in all, practice was well done by all athletes even though they were fighting the distraction of the weather through the entire time. I hope that we'll be able to get some more time in better weather soon!<br />
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<br />Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-44151933881461394372012-04-10T04:50:00.002-07:002012-04-11T08:07:05.030-07:00First practice of the season: 2011 vs 2012One of my teaching and coaching colleagues made a sharp observation after our first practice with the high school team this spring. He said, "Wow, we're way further ahead from this first practice compared to last year's first practice."<div><br /></div><div>That comment really stuck with me and I've been mulling it over for the last two weeks. Why was the first practice of the season so dramatically different between two years when I planned the practice in almost the exact same way? </div><div><br /></div><div>Given my preference for games sense coaching, both of the practices were based on games sense. We did a warm up and then started immediately into games. The first game was the aptly named Endball - this is a game that is easily modified and uses the basic premise of getting the ball from one end to the other in a regular invasion-territory type of game. Players may use any type of pass in any direction and the ball changes possession when it is intercepted (or whenever you determine a change - for instance, on a dropped ball or in a tie up/jump ball situation where hands from both teams are on the ball).</div><div><br /></div><div>My goal for the session, set in conjunction with the players, was to have them - loosely - playing rugby by the end of our hour in the gym. I believe we accomplished this goal as players were correctly lining up in defence and moving when the ball was moved to adhere to the offside laws - something we were able to underscore through questioning with the players - and in attack we were trying to gain depth from which to attack and all players got the hang of going forward with the ball in hand. </div><div><br /></div><div>However, it did look better than the year prior. We have a large number of new players this year and I don't think that the returning players simply remembered the practice from 12 months before and just repeated what they had learned. Instead, over time I've gotten better at setting the conditions of the game in the game sense area of coaching. What I mean by this is, I didn't just roll out the ball and tell them to play rugby with a few rules thrown in haphazardly. Through the last few years, particularly the past year, I've been able to watch many other coaches use game sense coaching to help teach the athletes a better understanding of the game through creating the conditions that allow for both success and struggle in a new concept. </div><div><br /></div><div>With the high school kids, the concept of moving forward as they catch the ball is challenging, as is trying to carry the ball and then to attack the defence. To try to encourage harder running and attacking, these were the conditions I set as I watched the game unfold. First, the players had to be calling for the ball and they could only do so if they were moving forward first. In other words, they were realizing that they were moving forward. And, even better, they were communicating that this was happening to the person passing them the ball. This started to improve several areas of the attack. </div><div><br /></div><div>Then, the players were moving forward but then going directly into contact. So, the aim of the ball carrier become to move the defender that was in front of them. We split into two groups briefly and reviewed how to run 2on1s with a linear support attacker (ie, the non-ball carrying player or support player runs deeper than the ball carrier and directly behind them; when the ball carrier takes a hard step to the right or left the defender comes with them, and then the support player runs at the space that the defender just left. Finally, the ball carrier makes a short pass to the support player into the space the defender has just vacated. Sounds simple, and it is a difficult concept to grasp). Once we split into the two on ones and then talked about what worked and did not work, we put the same game back into play. The condition for the attackers now was that they needed to run with a buddy - their buddy would be supporting from directly behind the ball carrier AND both players needed to be moving forward when they received the pass. </div><div><br /></div><div>The game continued and got a lot better! Since the players were moving forward and then trying to make the defender move, the support players got the ball more often and in a bit more space. </div><div><br /></div><div>One other aspect that we added in the next practice was to slow the defenders down since they were doing an excellent job (a little too excellent actually) of moving forward to take away the attacking players space. Every time the ball when to into contact, the defenders had to hit hands and knees on the turf and then they could stand back up to realign - this took a bit longer and gave the attackers a tiny bit more time to see what was happening and to organize running with their buddies. </div><div><br /></div><div>So, the conditions for success were added and the players responded very well. As a coach, I learned that observing what was happening and adjusting (quickly) accordingly is the key to success. We could continually identify what the end result was that we wanted by questioning the athletes. And then we developed the changes to how we played the game based on these answers and it worked out to be a huge difference from 2011 to 2012. </div><div><br /></div><div>We'll see how the season starts and how the players apply the lessons we've learned...</div>Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-58115387304191420482012-04-01T06:45:00.001-07:002012-04-01T06:46:29.125-07:00Rugby on PEI<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:officedocumentsettings> <o:allowpng/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:worddocument> <w:zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:trackmoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:trackformatting/> <w:punctuationkerning/> <w:drawinggridhorizontalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:drawinggridverticalspacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:displayhorizontaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:displayverticaldrawinggridevery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:validateagainstschemas/> <w:saveifxmlinvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:ignoremixedcontent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:alwaysshowplaceholdertext>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:compatibility> <w:breakwrappedtables/> <w:dontgrowautofit/> <w:dontautofitconstrainedtables/> <w:dontvertalignintxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument> </xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:latentstyles deflockedstate="false" latentstylecount="276"> </w:LatentStyles> </xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style> <![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">This past weekend I had the pleasure of travelling to PEI to help facilitate a women’s only coaching course. This was made possible through a “We are Coaching” grant from the Coaching Association of Canada and provided the funding for the entire event.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">We ended up with 6 course participants and had a very active and engaging session to start the day. All participants were able to coach a skill with a focus towards three goals for their session. They needed to make sure the “athletes” were having fun, to use games to coach and they needed to use a whole-part-whole approach. This group didn’t take themselves too seriously and by the end of the session, all participants had definitely had some fun. Also, all coaches ended their session with a game and spent some time in the “part” aspect of instruction.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Similar to other courses, there was some struggle with starting the coaching of a skill or practice with a game. All coaches finished their segment of practice with a game and had fun with their skills – the games are always fun! In reflecting on this, I believe there are several reasons why starting with a game was difficult for these newer coaches.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">For one, most players have been coached through the system of warm-up, work on skills through drills, split to units, do semi-opposed work and then possibly finish with a scrimmage at the end. We tend to coach as we have been coached rather than by investigating more effective ways to coach skills to our athletes. It makes sense that what worked for us will work for others…and when people get more inquisitive it always helps to look elsewhere for improvements. That’s where the NCCP courses are very helpful!</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Secondly, we tend to get caught up in the technical aspects of a skill. And, to further complicate this, many inexperienced coaches feel like they HAVE to focus on doing things perfectly rather than applying them to the actual game situation. What we tend to forget is that most of the time skills break down under pressure anyway…we may as well practice the skills under pressure right from the beginning. The coach can then focus solely on the key performance indicators that are MOST applicable to the situation at hand…and not feel like they have to cover every possible key point in only one practice. Also, a game allows the coach to see what key points the players intrinsically understand and therefore will not need to spend time on in practice.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">Finally, those coaches who are thorough practice planners have a hard time letting things go into an “unstructured” environment. It is very difficult (without practice) to create the conditions in a game to ensure the outcome that the coach wants. For instance, you need to start with the outcome of the game that uses the skill you want to coach. Or, if you really trust yourself, you can start with any game and then simply watch for the details that need to be fixed or noted in practice. However, it takes time to make this happen and there needs to be two types of trust to do this – you as the coach need to be able to trust yourself and your knowledge and the players need to be able to trust you to help them identify the most important aspects to improvement on any given day or within a weekly preparation cycle or even within a larger macrocycle in a yearly training plan.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 100%; ">My thoughts here are thinking about what you want to be able to achieve by the end of practice. As a coach, we need to create these conditions in the first game activity that allow the attack or defence to be successful in their challenge – we can manipulate the attack or defence by requiring certain standards or rules to be met. Creativity always seems to reign supreme here! The more practice I have in creating these conditions, the better I’m getting in my own coaching practice. Watching others grow in the course this weekend was refreshing and enjoyable!</span></p> <!--EndFragment-->Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-62353495527504092262012-03-24T06:30:00.000-07:002012-03-24T10:15:42.918-07:00Autonomy in the ClassroomSo far, most of the posts I've published here have focussed on coaching. In this, I'm going to focus in on my "real" job - teaching. I say "real" as in the one that actually pays the bills. Luckily, over a number of years at the same school, I've been able to develop a few courses that are enjoyable and challenging to teach. <div><br />
</div><div>This year, in my Sport & Society IDC (interdisciplinary studies) course, I tried to follow Daniel Pink's idea of autonomy in the classroom. At the beginning of the year, I asked the students to plan their class for the semester which they did and quite successfully, too. It's been a bit crazy keeping up with the teaching of a course that I didn't actually plan, but I felt comfortable enough to try it since there is quite a bit of relevant material on my computer...and Google has been rather helpful as well.<br />
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</div><div>Yesterday, on a bit of a whim, I dug out E.B. White's essay entitled "The Decline of Sport." We are currently looking at a unit that the class developed called Sport (R)evolution. White, mostly famously known for penning <i>Charlotte's Web</i>, wrote this satirical essay in the 1950s and speculated that the constant bombardment of sport would eventually be its undoing. Given the prevalence of mass and social media, many of his prophesies have come true. Ironically, I think this blog my be contributing to much of that same "hype" of sport that we see...then again, commercial gain is not the primary goal here and I'd like to think that blogging is not inundating and is more or less a positive pastime. </div></div><div><br />
</div><div>In any case, from an pedagogical perspective, I am trying to apply the lessons from Daniel Pink's writing and his predictions for what student's will need when they leave school to survive in the fast-paced, technologically driven world. <br />
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Hopefully, creating the opportunity for students to ask questions, to think outside the box and to construct meaning from the connections hey make in the world around them will be meaningful both now and in their future! </div>Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-11276100938951349362012-03-18T19:52:00.001-07:002012-09-26T19:03:40.024-07:00Choosing books for a coachThere are two stories here that mesh very well on coaching, teaching and learning. My wonderful stepson, Will, just finished up his first season playing basketball at high school. His coach was a young and engagingly friendly young man who went out of his way to praise Will and his teammates for their efforts through the season. We wanted to be able to give him a gift to recognize his time and effort with all the boys and particularly with Will. We suggested that Will choose from several of the leadership/coaching books that I have kicking around the house. Lest we were to be choosing forever, he suggested that I pick three books and then have Will pick one from the three I chose. <br />
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It's often been said that I enjoy reading and I've undergone a complete transformation in what I read over the past five or six years. Whereas I used to exclusively read non-fiction I have now done a complete 180 and gone almost entirely with fiction books. Several of these books can be seen to the right --> on my Shelfari bookshelf which is a neat little widget you can add to a blog. I usually have two or three of these books sitting on my bedside table, waiting (somewhat patiently) to be read. I had a very hard time narrowing the choices to only three! In the end, I wanted to make sure that the books wouldn't be chosen by their cover - they needed to look somewhat similar so that one book wouldn't win because it had an entirely different jacket design than another. That meant that Daniel Pink's <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Whole-New-Mind-Why-Right-Daniel-H-Pink/9781594481710-item.html?ikwid=a+whole+new+mind&ikwsec=Books">A Whole New Mind</a></span> was out since it's cover is bright orange and differs significantly from the books below. It also had to be accessible in Canada (sorry, Amazon.com) which meant that <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Character-Coaching-Building-Athletic-Programs/dp/188794348X/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1331601800&sr=8-7">Character in Coaching: Building Virtue in Athletic Programs</a></span> was also out. Both of these are books which I would not hesitate to recommend to both teachers and coaches and teacher-coaches, specifically in the later instance. <br />
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The three I chose for Will to choose from were mainly recent reads and the content of each book is something that I think about quite often in relation to both teaching and coaching. I've had several conversations with coaching and teaching colleagues on all of the books below related to teaching and coaching. The content provides incredible food for thought and definitely cuts into my REM sleep since putting these books down is a tough task. Below are the three books I chose:<br />
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One, <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Drive-Surprising-Truth-About-What-Daniel-H-Pink/9781594484803-item.html?ikwid=drive+by+daniel+pink&ikwsec=Home">Drive</a></span> by Daniel Pink. By the way, Daniel Pink also has an amazing <a href="http://www.danpink.com/">blog</a> on all things from his books and more - it's a very interesting read and worth checking out whether you have read his books or not. <span style="font-style: italic;">Drive</span> talks about how we should be motivated by autonomy in both business and education. In my understanding, if something relates to education then it likely relates to sport. I've found that when I have given both students and athletes autonomy in choosing what they learn and how they learn it (within, of course, the confines of the Ministry of Education or the sport season) their learning becomes almost exponential. This takes equal parts knowledge, trust, work and dedication to the task at hand. Of course, <span style="font-style: italic;">Drive</span> talks about other types of motivation and many other parts of 21st Century learning, however, this is the one area which I feel is most applicable to coaching and teaching. <br />
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Two, <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Talent-Code-Greatness-Isnt-Born-Daniel-Coyle/9780553806847-item.html?ikwid=the+talent+code&ikwsec=Home">The Talent Code</a></span> by Dan Coyle. Coyle also has a <a href="http://thetalentcode.com/">blog</a> filled with riveting and intellectually stimulating information. His book talks mainly about how purposeful, deep and focussed practice creates an expert. This is, of course, understating the scope of Coyle's writing, however, I believe it to be the crux of the novel. An expert, in Coyle's book, can be a teacher, performer, coach, athlete or musician. In my mind, I believe all of these professions have impacts on people that society mainly hopes are positive. Becoming an expert here can only benefit the small slice of humanity with whom each person comes in contact. <br />
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Three, <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/Mindset-New-Psychology-Success-Carol-Dweck/9780345472328-item.html?ikwid=mindset+by+carol+dweck&ikwsec=Home">Mindset</a></span> by Carol Dweck. Dweck has a website called <a href="http://www.brainology.us/">Brainology</a> that is extremely helpful to coaches and educators. In a future blog I will speak about some of the ideas she mentioned in her book and how I used them in my classroom to promote self-belief and student achievement. In this book, Dweck talks about the two mindsets, "growth" and "fixed". The premise is that choosing the growth mindset allows a person to continue to grow though failure, risk-taking and a genuine love of learning while the fixed mindset sees learning as a chore and that one who does not need to work is successful and one who needs to work or to take risks is unsuccessful (ie, people in a fixed mindset are naturally talented). The book allows the reader to glean insight into the growth mindset through numerous studies and could even change minds about the mindset that is chosen early in life. <br />
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I'm curious which book you would have chosen...which book would you have picked and why? I'll share the final choice in my next post.Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-5041361787915971072012-03-08T08:42:00.001-08:002012-03-10T13:10:37.296-08:00Old players...new coachesWe had an excellent morning practice on Thursday with the Queen's Women. Even more, I was thrilled that two of our former players Jocelyn Poirier and Kait Pasic, were able to join us. As grads, it can be hard to come back and coach the players who were teammates the year prior, but these two women didn't have any issues as their teammates were happy to have them back, albeit in a different role. <br /><br />One of my personal beliefs is that it is important for me to impress upon the players I coach that getting involved in the game as a referee or coach is just as significant as playing the game. Both Joce and Kait took this to heart and completed their NCCP Introduction to Competition training back in 2010 and were certified within the year. They have both stepped up and coached with the mini-rugby program in Kingston with the Panthers club and have also coached high school rugby. The best part of it all? Getting to watch them coach my daughter, Hannah. To watch these two tremendous women coach my daughter was to see why I coach in the first place - loving the people and loving the game. <br /><br />Back to Thursday's practice - basically, the practice was entirely game sense focussed. We played, we changed conditions, we played, we asked questions and then we played again. It was great to chat about why and how we were doing the things we were doing with all three coaches and to have them contribute what we were all seeing. <br /><br />Moral of the story? Coaching doesn't end when your players graduate...sometimes it's just the beginning :).Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1246389464633235980.post-9721041888899113172012-03-06T19:26:00.004-08:002012-03-06T19:40:02.002-08:00Coaches new to the games sense approach...amazing!Wow! I have the privilege of being able to teach and evaluate coaching courses with many other amazing Rugby Ontario learning facilitators. Tonight, I was able to do one of my favourite things in coaching and attended a practice with coaches who were finalizing their NCCP coaching certifications by actively coaching a session and by being evaluated. <br /><br />Firstly, it was a super experience since all three of the coaches were in a course that I co-facilitated last year. Secondly, they all did an incredible amount of learning in the games sense approach between the course and the evaluation. Finally, and most importantly, they totally bought in to a new and sometimes uncomfortable method of coaching due to it's unfamiliarity for most coaches. <br /><br />The three coaches all had significantly different experiences in rugby going from one year of experiences right through to 30 plus years. They all had been coached by coaches who coached the typical way...warm-up, do some drills, finish with unopposed or semi opposed play. The typical "lots of talk by the coaches and not much work by the players" type of practice....that just isn't athlete-centred, fun or result-producing.... So, they turned the practice upside down, started with a game, asked questions of the players to set the goals of the practice and skill, broke the skill down to key points and mini practice, and then put it all back into a high intensity and extremely fun game. And, believe me, the players had fun - they were also looking forward to leaving for an overseas tour in just about a week's time. Intensity was solid and high quality work by all athletes occurred for 90-95% of the practice.<br /><br />What solidified this whole experience was hearing a 30 year veteran of the game say (and I'm paraphrasing here), "This approach works. Why wouldn't I use it all the time?" And, "it's what we do in soccer...when I came back to playing rugby I went back to how I was coached long ago...this games sense approach is what we should always be doing!"<br /><br />Makes my heart happy to hear this stuff. What a fabulous day in coaching!Beth Barz http://www.blogger.com/profile/14989131582669971135noreply@blogger.com0