SYNTHESIS ESSAY
Foundations for the Future: A journey of growth through education
The pursuit of new opportunities has always been a driving force in my life and provided support when decisions need to be made. I have been fortunate to evaluate many experiences in my life by the engagement of the journey and the expected result. More often the case becomes made to decide on a future path in part because the journey appeals to my desire for adventure and knowledge. The journey to the starting line for a graduate degree has consistently been an expectation of mine after my senior year of high school as I had a PhD instructor for my course in government. I was a firm believer the pursuit of a post-undergraduate degree would somehow leave me better prepared to take on any challenge set before me. As realities change and paths take different directions, I never lost sight of the respect I held for my PhD instructor. The result of my evolving path led me to consider a graduate program at Michigan State University with a focus in sport coaching and leadership. I have always had sports as a constant in my life and continuing this behavior by choosing it for my graduate program concentration was a meaningful decision for me. The numerous learning environments began to lead my thinking and actions in new directions with an excitement I had not felt since my undergraduate program in secondary education. The continued exposure to a variety of topics and classes help to shape a newly discovered perspective towards my learning and instruction. The journey has become a significant experience that has adjusted my view of education and the applied elements necessary for success to be available to myself to my students.
The selection of the graduate program in education with a sport coaching and leadership focus was the combination of two passions. As an educator, I have continued to balance passion for teaching with an equal love of sport. I have most commonly fulfilled my love of sport through coaching. From ages five to eighteen, my coaching experiences have been diverse and always deliver growth towards my instruction as a coach. I set out to find a program that could support my desire to improve best practice as an educator and coach. Michigan State was an unknown possibility at the time of my initial exploration of graduate programs and was discovered by reviewing top-ranked programs in the United States. Further pursuits led to learning the offering of education and athletics as a possibility for my degree. I had been teaching subjects in the social sciences for a few years when the chance to pursue my athletic avenue in education arrived. I was fortunate to apply and receive employment as an Athletic Director of an international school abroad. The new responsibilities of instructing physical education and health classes were an added benefit to my experience. I have a strong background in athletics and have always loved sports which supported my initial transition from the classroom to the sport room. Reality set in and I became aware my personal wealth of knowledge in this field would eventually have a ceiling. I decided to enter into the graduate program at Michigan State to further my understanding of education and athletics. The program was broad with allowances to explore topics outside the selected concentration while providing a healthy offering of classes focused towards coaching and leadership. Throughout my program, each class had a significant presentation of information which benefitted my ongoing growth of understanding and learning as an educator. I would like to highlight a trio of classes responsible for significant impact to my approaches as a coach and educator. Psychosocial Bases for Coaching, Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes, and Issues and Strategies in Multicultural Education became turning points in my program adventure forcing me to evaluate education and coaching through a lens I had rarely, if ever, used before.
Kinesiology 855, or Psychosocial Bases for Coaching, was my first experience in the pursuit of coaching-style breakdowns to determine optimal fits for individual athletes and their potential success. The course highlighted the factors that influence coaching which can often become overlooked. The adjustments that can be made based on the demographics of an athletes or team were profoundly different than what I held to be true. Effective instruction as a coach could only come after acceptance of coaches to adapt and evolve in support of their athletes. Coaching strategies centered on effective practice structures helped me to see the negative consequences involved with poorly built training sessions. The common beliefs of ‘drill and kill’ are undone by showing repetition of a task will unlikely result in success if the environment for training is not considered conducive to growth. The course was a foundation of best practice approaches for coaches at varying levels of abilities with athletes at similarly ranging abilities. Communication was a significant cause in multiple issues among teams. We began to learn the communication style should be dependent on the athlete and their environment designed for achievement. Coaches commonly determine communication style based on their preference and can lead to detrimental results in their athletes. The information presented in KIN 855 was impactful towards my approach to athletes and my teams. I saw how minimal adjustments to my training could lead to greater personal growth for my athletes. I also changed my communication style based on the athlete and not on my personal preference. The most significant shift in my coaching practice is the belief I can impact positive achievement more productively in every athlete I coach. The approaches towards interaction and communication were important to my foundational knowledge in coaching. The physical element of coaching, in my opinion, is equally important and a reason for my next highlighted course selection.
Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes, or Kinesiology 856, was a significant course which affected my approach to training design for my athletes. The course discussed the tools needed to support movement in athletes and strive to create effective programs focused around athletes’ success. A key highlight was the video analysis project centered on skeletal and muscular movement patterns. We were given the opportunity to record and breakdown an athlete in their full execution of a skill within their sport. With the understanding of muscular movement and skeletal rotations, video analysis became an additional tool for evaluation. What I found so powerful with this class was the ongoing debates in the science communities surrounding nutrition, supplements, and athlete efficiency among other topics. The impact was immediate in terms of how I think about my athletes. The discussion between athlete and coaches to build a training program is critical for optimal success. I previously determined the quality of the athlete should dictate more of the program design and who has control of it. My beliefs about supplement have shifted away from considering them to be beneficial to elite athletes. The evidence suggests there are no additional benefits from supplements that can’t be found in a well-designed nutrition program. I was wrong to assume all the hype and this course exposed leading research to support the findings. Without the backdrop of Kinesiology as an undergraduate degree, I could not rely on my previous exposure to vocabulary or essential understandings of the presented subject. This created a challenging course but ultimately became the most significant course taken throughout my entire program. I used to accept that I knew how an athlete could use their body to produce optimal results. I created a large foundation of coaching and instructional knowledge that greatly shifted my approach towards training athletes. My new perspective is to evaluate each athlete individually and build custom programs around them if your goal is maximal growth in performance. Without this course, I would still evaluate athletes in general groups of similar traits and abilities. On a similar note, my final course highlighted the damage of general grouping based on similar traits. This setting, however, is off of the playing field and into the classroom.
Educational Administration 850, Issues and Strategies in Multicultural Education, was a course I selected outside of my concentration area to view an alternative topic that remained relevant to my teaching and coaching. Multicultural education was presented as a concept of beliefs and practices which influence the choices and actions of multiple cultures in shared society. History has revealed the inequality experienced by minority groups and this has been displayed proudly in public education. I was tasked with exploring the various components that lead to cultural divisions within societal groups. The concept of culture itself is broken down and exposed as a continuation of similar efforts experienced by native populations in the United States. The exposed truth is our progress towards understanding different cultures has not increased dramatically throughout history and the educational response of ‘taco night’ in schools has only promoted more division. I was an advocate of the educational topics to expose students to multiple cultures through food, religion, dress, customs, and traditions. I was not privy to the negative effect this can have on misrepresenting a cultural group. The class created a dialogue of ongoing discussion to have reflection not only in to our classrooms, but into our lives when we attempt to understand other groups. I have changed my approach to celebrating cultural differences by having students engage in the primary exchange. The educational process of forced learning is not authentic and represents a past of exclusion public education should attempt to eradicate. I come away from the class more open to change as an educator and as a coach. I have adjusted my awareness to multiple cultures within a team dynamic as I never used to before.
The program has forced me to change how I see my students and athletes in the educational setting. The initial goals of pursued knowledge and supporting every student have not been disturbed. If anything, they have been supported by the new knowledge and practices I received throughout this program. One of the many interesting results from my experiences with the program is the new discussions and opportunities that have been created. I used to live in an educational and athletic world that held fewer questions and the unknown outcomes for events were minimized. I have started to appreciate the beauty in undiscovered realities from new experiences in my teaching or coaching. The course offerings have led my path to experience concentrations in the education program to be very diverse. On overall shift for my practice as a community member in education has been to take on more challenges and pursue more to be discovered without reservations. This program has flipped some of my thinking completely around while exposing realities I never knew existed. In the evaluation of my gains as an educator, coach, and individual, the experience has made me appreciate the quality education and coaching I have received. I have learned the benefit of evaluating the teachers and coaches who possibly did not provide me with the best experience available. In a positive light, I am able to constructively look back to determine their lack of understanding as a building block towards my foundation of growth. The entire process has been a constant journey towards experiencing new realities which can now shape some of my new perspectives in coaching and educational instruction.
My initial ideas and understandings of a graduate program have been augmented in the past two years. The pursuit of new learning has always driven me to find success and continues to drive my passion as I near the completion of my program. Every challenge has been an opportunity for growth with those opportunities looking very different with each class. My education as a teacher will continue to evolve and seek to challenge each student with exploration of unanswered paths. My coaching has benefitted by understanding the complex recipe required for achieving success in every athlete and as an instructor. To appreciate each difference and embrace them as identities in my athletes is now viewed as positive growth instead of dissimilar groups. I hope to never lose sight of the passion I found throughout this program to always strive for more on the journey as it is the only way we can grow.
