Coaching While Being Coachable
This week, I had the opportunity to spend a day with my students as they competed at their local Leadership Development Events competition.
Overall, It was a fantastic day with one of our students winning extemporaneous and having seven students qualify to move on to regional competitions at the end of April.
Over the past couple weeks, I got to work with a few of my students as they were preparing for their individual LDE competitions. I worked with students competing in Extemporaneous, Creed and Employment Skills. During this time though, I had to reflect back on conversations from AEE 311 with Dr. Curry about what a coach is when preparing FFA students for competitions. I had to take a step back and realize that I still needed to be coachable about how I was preforming as a preservice educator in the role of advisor/coach. Talking with my Cooperating Teacher we had conversations about how to best prepare our students, but still realizing that the work and preparation was mostly on their part.
I focused a lot with the employment skills students as it was my favorite LDE to compete in while I was in FFA. We talked about creating resumes and cover letters and what their purpose was. I also took time to do mock interviews with each student and talked through their answers and how to better prepare themselves for their competition interview.
I was really proud of how the Employment Skills participants did with my students coming in 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th and 8th.
I was even more thrilled after hearing my two freshman's creeds. I realized that Mrs. McKelvey and I really had two superstar public speakers for only being in 9th grade. That definitely showed when they took 1st and 2nd.
Overall, It was a fantastic day with one of our students winning extemporaneous and having seven students qualify to move on to regional competitions at the end of April.
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| Employment Skills |


I look forward to continuing coaching conversations when I visit on Tuesday!
ReplyDeleteGood Job!