Up-Close Learning
November 18, 2014
Nearly 100 coaches gathered at the MHSAA office on Saturday, Nov. 1, for more than six hours of learning in Level 1 of the MHSAA Coaches Advancement Program. What occurred that day demonstrates the MHSAA’s commitment to a particular teaching and learning model we have chosen for its effectiveness, not its ease.
It would have been much simpler to put the 100 coaches in a single room and rotate three lecturers in front of them, and still simpler if everyone participated online in the isolation of their homes. But CAP is not delivered in either of those ways.
Rather, on Nov. 1, the nearly 100 coaches were placed in three separate rooms, so the presenters could see everyone’s eyes and read everyone’s faces and address everyone’s questions and concerns.
And, within those smaller rooms, the coaches sat in pods with four or five other coaches for more practical and often deeper discussion than the larger group setting allows.
Meanwhile, in an even more intimate fourth room, another 20 coaches completed the sixth and final level of the Coaches Advancement Program.
In an online world there is still a place for face-to-face teaching and learning. This is especially true in coaching where interpersonal relationships have more to do with determining success and failure than Xs and Os.
Anti-Participation Fees
August 23, 2016
Last month the Michigan High School Athletic Association released results of a survey of its member high schools regarding participation fees – a.k.a., “pay for play.” This was the 12th survey since the 2003-04 school year, making this the largest and longest record of school trends on this troublesome topic.
In spite of almost universal condemnation of the practice of charging students fees to participate in school-sponsored sports, the practice is now ingrained in the fabric of educational athletics, with more than 50 percent of reporting MHSAA member high schools indicating they require at least modest payments as a condition of playing on school-sponsored competitive sports teams.
The most recent survey of 557 reporting high schools revealed 51.5 percent charging fees, the same percentage as the year before, but down from a high of 57 percent two years ago. The percentage of schools with fees exceeded 50 percent for the first time in 2010-11.
While the MHSAA believes participation fees are counter-productive for schools and communities, the MHSAA offers a guide to “best practices” where school leaders have determined there are no better choices for providing necessary financial support for the interscholastic athletic program. Click here for this guide as well as the current and previous surveys.
Among the core values of school sports is a program that is inexpensive for students to play and for families to watch. The program should have great breadth and depth, appealing to many different students and open to all who have interest and meet high standards of eligibility and conduct.
Participation fees that discourage and limit participation are antithetical to these core values of educational athletics.