For a coach, the goal, unless you coach both at the elite level and with kids, say, 17 years old or older (e.g. college program or just maybe a HS varsity team) should be to develop players. We want them to be the best player they can be somewhere down the road–when they are 17 or…
Several years ago I got to watch U.S. Soccer Director of Scouting Tony Lepore run a training and identification session for promising U14 boys near Boston. The session was impeccably well-designed, and I have often reflected on how much I learned. At the end of the session, though, the boys were scrimmaging and Tony graciously spent…
Technique #1 in the new Teach Like a Champion 2.0 is “Reject Self Report.” The idea being that we should listen for the moments when, having just taught something or explained a task, we ask students questions like: “Everybody understand?” or “Everyone got it?” These questions, we should realize, are functionally rhetorical. There is only one…
Leanne Riordan teaches English Language Learners at Baltimore City Schools’ Holabird Academy. I’ve shared several of her insights previously in this blog and in the new 2.0 version of Teach Like a Champion. She sent me a note recently about using the principles of practice–ideas from Practice Perfect and several of our practice-intensive workshops as adapted…
I started thinking about the following while working with coaches during a session for the US Soccer federation—but it also reflects a couple of broader teaching thoughts that have been cooking away for a while. It’s pretty rough–still thinking of it as a draft but i I hope it will be useful to those who work…