Episode 16: Preparing for Adversity and Building Resilience with Coach Gary White

Unpack This Episode

Grab a drink, gather your colleagues, and discuss.

1. Competition and community are important elements of athletics. These can also be powerful motivators in the classroom. What are ways you encourage competition and collaboration within your classroom?
2. Coach White talks about coaching as a team effort, which includes himself, fellow coaches, athletic staff, and team captains. Are you part of a teaching team? Are there practices from coaching that can be adapted for managing and working with a teaching team?
3. Varsity athletic teams are able to intentionally recruit student-athletes, which can make agreeing on and building shared values easier. How important are shared values to your classroom space? How can you inclusively respond to students whose values are different from yours?
4. Coach White uses the analogy of a train continuously moving forward while making stops along the way to represent a team’s progress and growth. Does this analogy make sense for students learning in your classroom? What checkpoints exist in your course for students to check their progress and continue moving forward?
5. Coach White talks about preparing the team for upcoming challenges and opportunities through an “Adversity School” presentation and a “Championship Manual,” which includes stories from previous  student-athletes. How do you prepare students for the semester in your course? What challenges might your students face and what opportunities will they encounter? How might your current and former students provide insight to future students?
6. Novices and experts grapple with information differently, and as experts it may be difficult to remember what it was like to learn concepts in our field. Coach White speaks about putting himself in the role of a learner. What’s something you have learned recently? What was the process of learning like for you? How might this help you empathize with your students’ learning process?