Empowering Youth: Giving them opportunities to lead and speak about their experiences

Loeb Speaks About Project Coach in a Smith College Class

 

            As part of Project Coach's model for developing leaders, we give teens in our program the opportunity to lead in authentic situations, to speak about their experiences, and to make decisions about their lives, their community, and our program. Recently, our teens have had many of these opportunities and their growth from them has been overwhelming. The picture above shows Loeb Rosario, a six year Project Coach veteran who is now in community college, speaking to a class of Smith undergraduates about Project Coach, community sports, and building social capital. While speaking, Loeb mentioned how shy he was as an 8th grade student starting Project Coach. If he hadn't told the group, they would never have known. Loeb frequently presents on the program, its benefits to teens and the community and the need for more Project Coach programs. He has presented about it at Springfield middle schools and high schools, at our partner organizations, in New York City, and at many community forums. He is articulate and amazingly reflective about his experience and how Project Coach has helped him grow. He continues says that the best thing about Project Coach is that the staff trusts him to make important decisions, to work on big projects, and to take the lead on community events like Family Nights, Community Sports Day, and Field Day. 

        In line with what Loeb commented on, Project Coach works to provide leadership opportunities beyond coaching a team. Today (the first day of April vacation for public schools) teens went on a tour of Umass and Amherst College and some came to Smith to work on independent projects. Johnny (a senior in high school) worked on creating a structure, an agenda, and a set meeting time for our leadership council. He is leading this group of teens from our program who will make meaningful decisions about the program and how we grow and evolve. Priscilla worked on planning out and organizing our Community Sports Day in May. This included everything from requesting the fields, to meeting with the program director, inquiring about staffing, creating an agenda, deciding which games to play, and procuring snacks and water donations. Loeb and Efrain both worked on finalizing planning for our May 1st Family Night, and the kickoff of our first adult volleyball league. In doing these projects, teens have to put to use many communication and leadership skills taught in the Project Coach curriculum. They also have to do a lot of problem-solving and take initiative in order to move the project forward. They feel empowered by working hard on a project and watching it become something amazing. Staff at Project Coach support them, but the sense of really owning something and being responsible for its success is crucial to their development as leaders.

        Program staff understands that these projects, speaking opportunities, and other additional leadership roles truly add to our teens' positive youth development. A week ago, six of our coaches also spoke about their experience in school and at Project Coach to a graduate class at Smith College. One of our coaches truly came alive speaking to the students and expressed enjoying it so much it made him want to be a professor. These opportunities, though separate from the core of our program, empower our youth in a way that nothing else can. When youth truly feel they own portions of programming, can make crucial decisions about the future of the program, they are trusted to represent the program to important groups, and put in the hard work to make it run, they are significantly more invested and see themselves as agents of change in their community. This is positive youth development at its best!

            

Family Night: Minute to Win It!

Separation Anxiety Game 

       On Tuesday, March 26th Project Coach held another one of our fun and exciting family nights. Planned by our veteran youth staff and Springfield teachers, this night was amazingly successful with a great deal of play, enthusiasm, and relationship building. Modeled after the show Minute to Win It, the Gerena gym was set up with ten stations each with a one minute game or activity. Whether it was kicking their shoe onto a milk crate, separating different colored beads, or kicking as fast as possible to rack up steps on a pedometer, the kids and their families were fully engaged in the whole experience. Families who went to each station or won at least 6 stations got Project Coach prizes including jerseys, bracelets, and stickers. Families also enjoyed healthy fruit and vegetable smoothies provided by our partnership with the Holyoke Community College Nutrition Department. Throughout the whole night, everyone could feel the positive energy and excellent connections between PC families, staff, SPS teachers, and PC teen coaches.

 

       In accordance with the Project Coach model, the majority of planning and designing of the night fell to our veteran coaches who are now college students. They chose the games, planned the set up, made equipment lists and called all of the parents in our program to personally invite them. While it took many hours of planning, their ability to execute an engaging, multifaceted night of programming truly proved their skills as coaches, youth workers, and community organizers. Project Coach believes that this is the most effective model for both youth development and building community capacity. To have teens in the community organizing and running these events speaks to the power of youth and the assets within the North End waiting to be developed. Both the teens and Project Coach staff are eagerly preparing for our next family night on April 30th, knowing it will be a great success.

Coaches Write MCAS Encouragement Cards to Players

MCAS Encouragement 

     Thanks to a wonderful suggestion from a Springfield Public School teacher on our staff, our teen coaches worked for thirty minutes on Monday night to write all of their players a personal message about taking MCAS tests. As we hope our teen coaches become mentors and role models to their younger players, it was a great exercise in connecting with their players and providing them encouragement outside of the basketball court. Coaches put a lot of time and effort into crafting their messages and providing both support and suggestions. This week, all of the cards will be delivered to the elementary students during their homeroom period before MCAS start. Since MCAS are an important indicator of school and student success, Project Coach wanted to support all of our participants on test day. 

Spanish and English message!

     In addition to providing a nice encouragement, having our coaches write messages with suggestions and techniques helps them to think about the importance of MCAS. Many of our coaches are currently in tenth grade and will be taking the tests soon. Since these tests can impede a student's ability to graduate, it was important for our coaches to reflect on what they have learned about taking tests and why they need to try their hardest on each one. Over the last month, tenth grade coaches have been working with their tutors to practice and prepare for the ELA long composition test. However, by working with their players to prepare them for the tests, coaches are more able to realize how important this preparation truly is. Many of the coaches have led sessions with their players to complete practice tests and discuss testing strategies. This multilevel preparation system allows our teens to acquire all of the necessary skills to tackle these tests.

Update: Students thoroughly enjoyed reading their MCAS encouragement cards and many commented to their teachers that they worked harder on the test because of it! In one school, students taped the cards to the front of notebooks and binders to have a continual reminder about how much their coach cares. Since it was such a success, our coaches will be repeating it at the start of math MCAS in May. 

Project Coach and Power Writing

Project Coach Teens and Mentors Participating in the Power Writing Workshop 

            In connection with the youth empowerment movement of Power Writing and the documentary "To Be Heard," Project Coach teens and their Smith College mentors participated in a workshop and film screening on Monday, March 4th. After meeting some of the program's leaders including Amy Sultan, Roland Legiardi-Laura, Pearl Quick, and Joe Ubiles, the teens learned about the importance of literacy in our society. Roland shared the ways that reading and writing ability can predict your future. Students were taught the Power Writers' motto, "If you don't learn to write your own life story, someone else will write it for you." Pearl, a former student in the Power Writers class, shared how the class helped her write her story, get in to Sarah Lawrence College, and move out of her neighborhood. Then, Project Coach students and their mentors were given about ten minutes to write about whatever they wanted. Following this time, a Project Coach teen volunteered to be the Master (the one responsible for choosing volunteers to share and people to comment). Pearl started the sharing with her own poem and then many teens from Project Coach and some staff members shared their writing. The stories ranged from humorous to deeply personal and everyone was celebrated for sharing. Each presenter was clapped in to feel welcome and clapped out to feel they were at home. After twenty minutes of this, the group had experienced an unprecedented relationship building activity and empowerment through literacy. 

        Following the workshop, Project Coach teens went to a screening of the documentary, "To Be Heard" which closely followed three students in the Power Writers class in the South Bronx. Pearl, who helped lead the workshop, was one of the three main characters in the film. The film was an honest portrayal of the success of youth empowerment as well as the times when students continue to make life altering mistakes. All of the Project Coach teens thoroughly enjoyed the film and the real portrayal of teenage life in America. After watching the film, Loeb Rosario reflected, "It made me think about how I based my life on sports and Project Coach and the characters in the film used poetry to help them live." All of our coaches were inspired by the film and many suggested that we continue to use Power Writing as a part of Project Coach. 

Umass Basketball Clinic

     The month of January and February may have been a break from regular Project Coach programing at the Springfield elementary schools, but the high school coaches stayed plenty busy during these months between fundraisers, crew training, college visits, project coach training days, and multiple sports clinics at local colleges and universities. As a program we were very grateful to have both Amherst and Umass offer to run basketball clinics this past month and Western New England University offer to run a volleyball clinic with us in this past week. 

     The Umass clinic on February 2, 2013 was especially a treat as we had the Minutemen's home court, the Mullins Center all to ourselves.  The Umass women's team put on a great clinic for our high school coaches and staff in which we went through an array of drills ending with a rather competitive (but friendly) scrimmage. 

We dribbled....

We passed...

We received great instructions and tips from Division I coaches and players...

We dribbled some more...

We shot around and we scrimmaged...

Some off us even put on our coaching faces and strategized for the "BIG" scrimmage...

And we of course ended the clinic with a Project Coach huddle and cheer...

     Overall we had a lot of fun with the Umass players and coaches, learned some good instructional tips and drills, and the high school coaches also got to ask the players great questions about college life and how they manage to balance school and extracurriculars.  After the clinic the day continued as half of the group went to the Amherst basketball game to support the players who had run a clinic with us in late January, while the other half went on a tour of the Umass campus areas of interest to them with the Umass coaches and some of the Red Shirts.

Spin-a-Thon

Last weekend, February 16th and 17th in Ainsworth Gymnasium on the Smith College campus, Anna Hallman sat on her stationary bike and proceeded to ride, direct, coach, and DJ eight hours of spin classes.  This monumental feat of endurance, riding well over 100 miles, is quickly becoming known as "The Ride."  Is Anna Hallman crazy?  The short answer is: maybe.  Anna is a red-shirt-in-waiting, and she wants one thing that a lot of people in Project Coach want--more female coaches in leadership positions.  To do that, we have to match a $5000 grant which will go to paying two new female purple shirts.  So no, Anna isn't entirely crazy, she rode to help raise money to match this $5000 grant.  She wasn't alone, as a slew of Project Coach members joined her for portions of the ride, as well as Smith students and faculty.  The weekend was an incredible success, raising just north of $565 and giving all who rode a great workout.

If you missed us last weekend, there's still plenty of time to donate!  Here's the link:

http://www.razoo.com/story/Project-Coach-1

Denmark Exchange

Mass Youth Soccer G Level Training for Project Coach and Denmark Coaches

         For the last week and a half, twenty high school girls and ten adult mentors from the group Ready, Steady, Soccer came to visit Project Coach all the way from Copenhagen, Denmark. The group (similar to Project Coach), teaches teenage girls how to coach soccer for youth in their local soccer clubs. As a new initiative in Denmark, the project hopes to bring more females into the sport and help females stay involved in the soccer clubs as they get older. The ten adult mentors all volunteer to work with the girls and help them improve as coaches and as leaders. After setting up host stays for all of the girls and planning for months, Project Coach was more than excited for their arrival. Unfortunately, they arrived just hours before winter storm Nemo began to blanket us in snow. Due to the storm, some of our Friday and Saturday events were cancelled. As a silver lining, many of the girls got to experience some serious sledding! On Sunday, we still held a Mass Youth G Level Coaching Training for the group from Denmark, Project Coach, and some local Northampton teenagers. As the video above shows, it was a fun, active day spent learning techniques and strategies to coach young kids in soccer. The teens really enjoyed learning about ways to coach and learning about each other.

The Danish Girls in Front of College Hall 

      On Monday, the girls went to UMASS to see the large university and meet players and coaches from the college team. Afterwards, they were able to practice with an FC-16 team  (some of whom were girls from the host families). On Tuesday they shadowed at Northampton High School and then ran their own soccer clinic for local girls at Smith College. The clinic was exciting and engaging with stations for fun soccer games (red light, green light) and an obstacle course. Wednesday they spent time in Springfield at one of the high schools many of the Project Coach students attend (Springfield Renaissance). They also visited the Basketball Hall of Fame and then went to Gerena Elementary School to participate in a Project Coach sports session. The PC coaches led them through our volleyball and fitness games with one station for basketball (many of the girls really wanted to play this). At the end we all played a fun basketball game and then ate dinner together. The Danish girls spent Thursday learning about Smith College, the reasons behind it being an all girls school, and shadowing Smith students. At night, the Project Coach teens put on a Valentine's Day celebration (with food, desserts, presentations, and dancing) for the whole group from Denmark, the host families, and Project Coach staff. It was an extremely exciting and engaging celebration and the PC teens did a lot of work to make it a success. After the Denmark group spent a day in NYC they were already on their way to Boston to fly home.
       Many of our Project Coach teens have been in contact with the girls since they left. They have been sharing ideas about coaching, being a teenager, and the possibility of visiting Denmark. While they were here, Project Coach staff presented to the adult mentors on our program, the success we have had, and the way we continue to run a strong youth development organization. The leaders of Ready, Steady, Soccer were eager to share information about our program with their clubs' board members and presidents. We are working into the possibility of bringing our coaches to Denmark next year and are continuing to exchange ideas about youth development and coaching.