I’m overdue for a post on coaching. Sorry bout that. Manuscript writing is like digging a well. The farther down you go the less else you see. Fortunately I came up for air today for long enough to see this session plan by NY Red Bulls youth coach Fernando Alva, who tweeted it. “Tweaked a few…
Great article by Chris Koentges last week in the Atlantic on the topic of how Finland became a hot spot—in the Daniel Coyle sense—for developing goalies. Here’s a link and six takeaways I had on the coaching front from reading the article. My observations are soccer-centric, but not hard to apply elsewhere I am sure. Love…
Part one of a really interesting (for me) interview I recently did with Soccer America’s Mike Woitalla is out and up today. You can read it here. The topic is Check for Understanding, which is perhaps the biggest challenge for any teacher… the hardest “endemic problem” in the job, to use Deborah Ball’s phrase. Two follow-up…
As many of my friends and colleagues know I am a big soccer (i.e. football) fan. Love the game and love thinking about teaching the game… because I find it fascinating, because my kids all play, and because there’s always vice versa- Thinking about how the things I’ve learned about teaching from observing classrooms do or…
I recently watched an outstanding soccer coach running an unsuccessful drill. He was teaching players to position themselves defensively and react to an opposition player with the ball who was trying to turn. He explained and modeled how to do it right. He asked them whether they understood. Then he sent them off to practice. Most…