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.
Visualizing Transfers
January 30, 2018
There are two visual aids to bring to the discussion of the transfer rule serving school sports in Michigan.
One visual is of a continuum, of a line drawn across a page, with 50 dots representing the transfer rules of the 50 states, with the more liberal or lenient rules to the left and the more conservative or strict rules to the right.
The dot for Michigan’s rule would be well to the left of center. The basic rule calls for an approximately one-semester wait for eligibility after a transfer, but with immediate eligibility if one of the 15 stated exceptions applies to the student’s circumstances.
The majority of states have a longer period of ineligibility and fewer built-in exceptions.
The second visual is of a playground teeter totter.
Sitting at one end are the majority of school administrators of Michigan (about two-thirds) who want a tougher and tighter transfer rule, with a longer period of ineligibility and fewer exceptions.
At the other end of the teeter totter is parents of school-age children, some unmeasured portion of which believe there should be no limitations in how or where they educate their children, whom they believe should have full and immediate access to all school programs at any school they choose for their children.
In the center, at the teeter totter’s fulcrum, is the Michigan High School Athletic Association, helping parents hear school administrators, and vice versa.