While these notes focus on building credibility as a coach, I find them applicable to any leadership position. Whether it’s with a classroom or a boardroom, it’s really important to remember to the inherent value of the people you’re working with.
(Photo by apesara)
(Photo by Kapungo)
This summer, I took a class all about physical education. The course is taught by Mike Perez, an athlete, a coach, and a teacher with decades of experience, and the current head of West Valley College’s Athletics Program. So far it’s one of the most interesting and inspiring classes I’ve ever taken. Even if you’re not planning on entering the field–and especially if you are–you have take this class. Every day is a bit like The Last Lecture. I sure wish I took this course earlier in life and sure am glad I’ve had the chance to take it now.
There’s quite a lot that goes into a good physical education program that we, and perhaps our PE teachers, have taken for granted. Some of it is glaringly obvious: for example, how important is it to let kids choose teams? Were you ever the last kid chosen? Do you remember how that felt? If you weren’t, what did you think the kids that were felt like? It takes a few minutes, no seconds, for the teacher to split the class up into teams and this saves a lot of the kids from a lot of anxiety.
A couple months back, Tim Ferriss’s twitter mentioned this article: Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn? It was a piece about a memorization program called SuperMemo and its genius creator. The theory the behind the software is for better memorization, the best time to recall something is right before you’re about to forget it. This is better than blind repetition because you don’t waste time repeating things you already know and, just as importantly, the delayed recall helps develop a deeper memory of the information to be remembered (because it gives time for the user to move it from short-term to long-term memory). I’ve been using a program called Anki and am quite pleased with the results. Download and try it yourself.
Continue reading Anki – Effective Learning Through Spaced Repetition