Chuck Noll's Thoughts On Teaching

One of favorite books is "The Game-Makers" by Jack Clary.  The book profiles NFL coaches: Paul Brown, Chuck Knox, Tom Landry, John Madden, Chuck Noll, Bum Phillips, John Ralston and Don Shula. The book was written in 1976 and is a great resource.

"Coaching is teaching and an efficient teacher can get the job done.  Efficiency is the prime objective from a teaching standpoint.  A teacher, or coach, cannot wander because he works with attention spans that are short for what he must acomplish.....The first thing I learned as an assistant coach was that you must be organized in your presentation and that only comes when you know what you're teaching."

Teaching: Simplify and Clarity

4 Offensive Items To Simplify & Clarify:
     What passes we want
     What dribbling we want
     What specific screens we want
     What cuts we want

The Gift of Love

Coach Summitt carried this passage in her planner.  It's a great summary of our responsibility as leaders and teachers and parents.

You can love me,

but only I can make me happy.

You can teach me,

but only I can do the learning.

You can lead me,

but only I can walk the path.

You can promote me,

but I have to succeed.

You can coach me,

but I have to win the game.

You can even pity me,

but I have to bear the sorrow.

For the Gift of Love

is not a food that feeds me.

It is the sunshine

that nourished that which I must finally harvest for myself.

So if you love me

don't just sing me your song.

Teach me to sing,

for when I am alone,

I will need the melody.

--Dan Baker

Thoughts on the passage above:

"The worst thing you can do to someone you love is to do something for them that they can and should do for themselves."--Abraham Lincoln

"Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day.  Teach a man how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime."

Teaching & Learning

"Nothing has ever been taught until learned;

nothing has ever been learned until taught."

--Jud Heathcote

What Great Teachers Have In Common

In an informal survey, a number of students and teachers were asked to remember a special teacher they had and to list the qualities that made those teachers special. The survey's participants formed a diverse group, which included adults in education, research, business communities, and students in public schools, some who were receiving remedial tutoring. From the descriptions received, 11 common practices of good teaching were extracted, all directly related to challenge and engagement.

 1) THE MAKE LEARNING ENGAGING.
2) THEY HAVE PASSION FOR THE MATERIAL.
3) THEY HAVE DEEP SUBJECT KNOWLEDGE.
4) THEY ARE EXTREMELY ORGANIZED.
5) THEY ARE INTENSE.
6) THEY KNOW STUDENTS NEED TO BE RECOGNIZED FOR EVEN SMALL PROGRESS.
7) THEY TREAT EVERYONE WITH RESPECT.
8) THEY ARE FAIR.
9) THEY BELIEVE ALL STUDENTS ARE NATURAL LEARNERS.
10) THEY MAKE IT IMPLICITLY KNOWN THEY LIKE BEING WITH THEIR STUDENTS.
11) THEY PLACE PRIORITY ON INDIVIDUALIZED TEACHING.

-Swen Nater and Ronald Gallimore, taken from You Haven’t Taught Until They Have Learned, John Wooden’s Teaching Principles and Practices.

"Know Thyself"--Teacher/ Coach Theory From Bob Knight

A. Evaluate Yourself
     1. Know your strengths and weaknesses
          a. What you can’t do is more important than what you can do in deciding things
     2. Know what you want and don’t want to do
     3. How well do you discipline yourself?
          a. can’t be late
          b. show up everyday
          c. be responsible
    4. How good are you with people?
          a. 2 things you must be able to do to succeed.
               Talk
               Write
    5. How well do you work for people?
          a. take directions
          b. can you do what is demanded of you?
     6. How demanding can you be?
          a. there is a strong correlation between learning and what is demanded
          b. must get people to do what they don’t want to; make them go beyond their comfort zone
          c. how tough can you be?
          d.can you control a classroom?
          e. demand that players graduate, go to class, or don’t play
          f. you should feel that you know more about what is good for them, than they do
     7. How well do you accept criticism?
          a. “Any fool can criticize, and they all do.”
          b. be prepared for it, everyone feels they could do it better
          c. involves critiques, public criticisms
     8. How well do you prepare/plan?
          a. “The will to prepare to win is ultimately greater than the will to win.”
          b. most teams are even, the team best prepared to win, will
          c. preparation is vital

Teaching The Part Method From Pete Newell

Part-method teaching tells a kid why he's doing something. In five-on-five drills you're not teaching, you're coaching. Break it down one-on-one, two-on-two, three-on-three, go through every option of the offense and defense, and the players will understand why you're doing it. And if they make mistakes, you can point it out. The parts make the whole. It's like your car engine; you work on the sparkplugs or the carburetor or whatever's causing the problem. You don't have to get rid of the whole motor.

Ralph Miller's Purpose of Coaching Basketball

"The purpose of coaching (learning) basketball is to teach (learn) the FUNDAMENTAL SKILLS of basketball and related knowledge for competitive purposes."
--Ralph Miller, Former Head Coach Oregon State

Pre-Season Planning--What's Your Pivot Foot Philosophy?

As we plan our pre season workouts, we review all of our teaching points and philosophy. We want to simplify our teaching. We want to look at what we need to emphasize-daily, weekly, etc. Reviewing tape from last season will give us great ideas where to begin. One of the things we will look at is our footwork. Every coach must decide on a pivot foot philosophy.

1.) Permanent Pivot Foot (PPF)-- the nondominant leg is used as the pivot foot at all times, i.e., a right handed player used the left foot pivoting while the left handed player uses the right foot. The advantage of this philosophy is that it is simpler and it places the player in a shooting position with the dominant foot in a staggered stance.

2.) Either Pivot Foot (EPF)--the left or right foot may be used as the pivot foot by both right and left handed players. The advantage of the EPF technique is the flexibility to meet all situations and it's coordination with the quick stop (where either foot may be used as a pivot foot).

Thoughts on Passing The Basketball

General Ideas On Passing:
• Not very many good passers any more
• Everybody likes a good passer
• Good passing teams are happy teams
• Look to point and say thanks

Great passers can do these things:
• Pass with either hand
• Work on passing anytime they have a ball and a teammate
• Understand the people they pass to (right person, right place, right time)
• Zip their passes—with proper spacing you cannot throw a flick pass to hard
• Make the easy (simple) pass and pass away from the defense

Passing
1. Triple threat position
2. Use vertical fakes
3. Look off your pass
4. Step into the pass
5. Put your wrist in their forehead (flick pass)

Skill Development--Isolate the skill, then Teach

A critical part to the game planning process is to identify the skills each player needs to perform the steps (tasks) involved in a particular play or sequence. After identifying the skills needed by the player, a team must a have a process in place for ensuring that their players develop these skills so that each play or player sequence is productive. Taking steps to develop these skills in every player occurs in two stages: Isolating the Skills & Teaching the Skills.


ISOLATE THE SKILLS
The first step in the process should be to analyze the tasks involved in the assignment of every player. Next, a decision must be made regarding whether the players have the ability to master the necessary skills. If it's determined that the ability of the players does not mesh with the skills required for a specific task. The Head Coach must either discard this part of his offensive plan or alter the play sequence to fit the level of talent.


Whatever the decision, the decision can be made easier if one strictly adheres to one of the cardinal principles of training--SPECIFICITY. This refers to the fact that "an individual gets what he trains for". All factors considered, the more specific his player's preparation, the better their performance.


TEACH THE SKILLS
Teaching players skills they need involves an evolutional process of promoting, enhancing, practicing and refining each facet of the capacity being developed. Rudimentary teaching progression of "hear it, see it, do it".

The Competency of Teaching Ability

Chuck Daly said he was a salesman--and also a teacher. It's true. If you can't teach, you can't lead. A salesman persuades people to a certain course of action, a teacher persuades people to become a certain kind of person. Great teachers inspire and motivate people to become learners with a hunger and thirst for knowledge. Great teachers inspire people to seek wisdom, to grow in character, to find solutions, to pursue knowledge and to stretch their understanding.


What makes a Teacher/Coach special is the ability to transfer knowledge to you. They teach what they know.


The deepest learning doesn't take place in the classroom, but in the laboratory of life.

Taken from, "The Paradox of Power" by Pat Williams

Coaches Should Create Environments Where Learning Is Valued

Coaches Should Create Environments Where Learning Is Valued Coaching isn’t just technique or strategy. Coaches should acquaint themselves with the kinds of thinking patterns that help athletes perform more effectively; understand obstacles that inhibit performance; determine which practice patterns work best—for the individual and the team. In other words, he should learn about the mental and physical aspects of the sport and the athlete—and create an atmosphere in which the athlete is encouraged to learn as well. --H.A. Dorfman, “Coaching The Mental Game”

Overcoached & Undertaught--Pete Carril Distinguishes Between Coaching & Teaching

Difference Between Coaching & Teaching

“There is a difference between teaching and coaching. When you are instructing your team about the actual game, you are teaching them, transmitting knowledge and information to them. There are guys who don’t teach their players anything or much of anything, but who go around and recruit the best players and win—they’re coaches but not teachers.”
--Pete Carril

Joe Paterno's Thoughts on Coaching/ Teaching

From Joe Paterno:

Basic Beliefs
1. The Coach is a Teacher, not a Strategist.
a. Coaching is one thing. It is creating in practice the situation the player will face in the game, and then repeating it until he can react by rote memory.

2. Have a directed work effort toward constructive things.

3. Performance is what counts.
a. Potential makes no difference.
b. Don't ever get sold on what defeats the teams you can beat anyway. Devote yourself only to those plays which will win the championship game for you.
c. Practice to beat great teams.

4. Consistency
a. Team that wins is the team that makes the fewest number of bad plays.
b. The best player is the player who makes the fewest bad individual plays.

The Greatest Teachers/ Leaders

The Greatest Teachers

“The greatest teacher makes a few simple points. The powerful teacher leaves one or two fundamental truths. And the memorable makes the point not by telling, but by helping the students discover on their own. Learning takes place through discovery, not when you’re told something, but when you figure it out for yourself. All a really fine teacher does is to make suggestions, point out problems, above all, ask questions, and more questions and more questions…teaching encourages not only discovery but initiative.”

--William Safire, “Lend Me Your Ears”

Simplify--Simplify--Teach--Simplify

SIMPLICITY

Pete Newell described two groups of coaches: those who believe in simplicity and execution and those who believe in surprise and change. Obviously, he and I are part of the simplicity and execution group
—Bob Knight

Simplicity and execution: How something is most effectively done.
Simplicity says, “Less is more.” It allows players to have a sense that there are specific techniques and strategies that are basic for their success—the success of the team. They gain confidence because of their familiarity and consistency of purpose.

Simplicity demands execution. If every athlete knows what to do and every opponent know what will be done, the anticipation is one of predictability. This is comforting for those who execute and seemingly comfortable for those who believe themselves to be ready to respond.
The coach who uses complex strategies and trickery cannot expect his players to execute them with any consistency, because they are not easy or familiar.

Simplicity says, “I will eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary can be perfectly expressed.”

The greatest truths are the simplest.

Simplicity is an indication of trust of what a coach believes in. No garnishes, no garbage. The desire to be clever sometimes overwhelms the understanding of how to be effective.

Emerson said, “To be simple, is to be great.”

On The Ball Defense Teaching Progression

On Ball Teaching Progression:

• First thing to practice is no middle.
• Then, contesting shots
• Then, defend shotfake.
• Then, blockout

Simplicity & Execution

SIMPLICITY & EXECUTION

Pete Newell described two groups of coaches: those who believe in simplicity and execution and those who believe in surprise and change. Obviously, he and I are part of the simplicity and execution group.
--Bob Knight

Simplicity and execution: the one strikes at the heart of how something is most effectively done, the other at the repetition required to get it done.

Simplicity says , “Less is more.” It allow athletes to have a sense that there are specific techniques and strategies that are basic for their success—the success of the team. They gain confidence because of their familiarity and consistency of purpose.

Simplicity demands execution.

The coach who uses complex strategies and trickery cannot expect his athletes to execute them with any consistency, because, by nature of definition, they are not easy or familiar. The opponents may be initially fooled by the deception but relieved to see that the surprise was wrapped in poor execution.

Simplicity says, “I will eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary can be perfectly expressed.”

The greatest truths are the simplest.

The desire to be clever sometimes overwhelms the understanding of how to be effective. Ralph Waldo Emerson had it right. “To be simple, is to be great.”

How We Learn

WE LEARN............

10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we both hear and see
70% of what is discussed with others
80% of what we experience personally
95% of what we TEACH to someone else

--William Glasser