Roll Call for Project Coach...!

So what does theater have to do with coaching? While the PC coaches may not need to perform Shakespearean soliloquies on the field, they do need to be aware of how they are using their bodies and voices, a point that Smith sophomore Kia Johnson tried to get across in last Wednesday’s workshop.

Before working on using their voices and bodies for coaching, the coaches had to think about what it takes to be a good coach: interacting with the kids to show them how it goes, being responsible, showing respect, focusing on the positive, practicing it themselves. But how can they do that with their body? “Don’t slouch.” “Don’t cross your arms.” “Eye contact.” “Present strong.”

This was great in theory, but could they put it into practice? The coaches began by splitting into pairs to tell each other, “I believe in you,” “I love you,” and “I hate you” – but they had to do so first with no passion in their voice and without using their hands, then with passion but still no hands, and finally going all out with passion in their voice and using their hands.

If the coaches had any discomfort with expressing these sentiments to one another, it was not evident. The room was soon full of passionate declarations of love and hatred. This task may seem pretty simple, considering that they were using phrases that come with emotion attached, so the next challenge was to do so with nursery rhymes. Each group was assigned a rhyme, and the group leader had each coach read the rhyme with a different emotion. Can “Humpty Dumpty” really be read angrily? What about nervously?



While they may not have made sense, they showed the coaches how much the emotion in their voice can change the perception of what they’re saying, and therefore, how careful they need to be to make sure that their words, voice, and body are all saying the same thing to the kids they are coaching.

By Rachel Hanlon

Project Coach in the Press!

College coaches city youngsters

The Republican
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
By FRED CONTRADA


NORTHAMPTON - Loeb G. Rosario knows exactly where he wants to be a dozen years from now.

"I want to be under the big lights, making the big decision to win the game," the Central High School sophomore from Springfield said.

The 16-year-old has a jump on that dream, thanks to Project Coach, a Smith College-sponsored program that gives Springfield teen-agers the tools to navigate the playing field as well as the field of life. Recently, Rosario was among a batch of teens learning leadership skills and training regimens under the tutelage of Smith professors Sam M. Intrator and Donald S. Siegel.

Siegel, who heads a master's program on coaching, came up with the idea for Project Coach while on sabbatical in 2003.

"The question was: Can sports be used to leverage education?" he said. "Sam and I did a lot of talking about that. There had to be mechanisms that taught certain things. The best way to do this is to teach kids to be coaches."

Now in its seventh year, Project Coach runs a sports league that plays at Chestnut Street Middle School and German Gerena Community School in Springfield. There are currently 25 high school students coaching 120 Springfield elementary school pupils in basketball and soccer. The program raises money to pay the coaches minimum wage salaries, and the teens, in turn, spend one day a week on special community health projects. One young coach recently gave a presentation on diabetes 2, which Intractor said is a huge health problem in north Springfield. The program also includes training on how to deal with bullying.

Rosario, who has been with Project Coach for three years, said he has seen the effects of the program in his school work as well as on the court.

"It teaches you how to be responsible and get things done on time," he said. "We have to get the kids to be there on time. They look at us like role models, basically."

Jaytoe E. Teh, 16, is a junior at Putnam Vocational Technical High School and an All-State soccer player. He said Project Coach has made him a better person as well as a better coach.

"It's helping teens and little kids at the same time," he said.

Some of the coaches-in-training recently took part in a research project by Smith senior Helene M. Parker, who was using weight-sensing equipment and a computer to study balance. Her findings could help the young coaches teach their players how to attain better stability.

Siegel said one of the program's goals is to get its teen-age coaches nationally licensed so that they can coach in any state.

Francesca M. Rodriguez, 17, a senior at Springfield Renaissance School, loves sports, but said Project Coach has been her avenue to a different career.

"I want to be a teacher," she said. "This helped me finally decide, because I love working with kids."

Rodriguez has applied to Hampshire College, where she hopes to study special education teaching at the elementary level.

http://www.masslive.com/springfield/republican/index.ssf?/base/news-27/1266999378286590.xml&coll=1

Toy Soldiers Arrive at Project Coach!

The journey began with Andy Wood walking into Toys R Us (a place he swears he hasn’t been in a long time…) in search of toy soldiers. Why toy soldiers? Because that is what the coaches at Project Coach were using to learn about their plays and strategies. As I walked over to one group of coaches, I ask them why their little soldiers (who were actually toy firefighters and policemen) were set up in a circular formation, and not in a typical play formation. Coaches Richie Colon and Gabriela Rodriguez arranged this particular set up of small men and as I sent down, I asked them to explain it to me.



“There are in a huddle,” Richie explains. He continues, “Huddles are how coaches and players get to know each other, everyone gets to know everyone else’s names”. And in this particular exercise, the coaches lead the huddle by asking their players to describe their role model to the rest of the group. I ask them why discovering who the kids’ role models are is important, especially when it is being asked in a sports team huddle. Gabriela pauses, looks up at the ceiling, and tells me, “That’s a hard question!” After a few more minutes of consideration, she has an answer for me. “If a person they look up to is positive, it is good that the kids want to be more like them”. I ask her why it is important that the coaches know who the models are and she says, “As their coach, the athletes will automatically look up to us and so it is good to know who the kids look up to, and know what traits they admire, so we can make sure we do our best to people that are good role models for them and coaches they can connect to”.

Other tables of coaches had their miniature men set up in play formations, ready for action, as they discussed different plays and different scenarios.

Then everyone moved into the gym and the coaches took turns explaining their applied skill games and suddenly the toy firefighters and policemen became teens executing plays.

By Marie Wallace

Prayer for Brightwood By. Abraham Bienvenido Henderson

mama always said
take your time young man
mama always said
you gotta get young to get old
mama always said
money comes and goes
mama she don't know...

that there are streets
calling our children
more than telemarketers
on every corner and every block
that their are more opportunities
selling rock than investing in stock

but before el cuco does his share
of interviews
we are here
at 3pm
waiting for the bell to ring
for another round
Brrrriiiiinnng!!!

Outside Brightwood Middle School
they rush out like a coming wave
pouring through double doors
pack packs pregnant with books
bouncing on their shoulders
to out marked meeting spot by the black iron fence

Rodriguez?
here!
Cruz?
here!
Aybar?
here!

all ready to go
down these glass glittered side walks
sprinkled with broken bottles and dreams
concrete curbs like lips
waiting to eat them

Molina?
here!
Gonzalez?
here!
Rios?
here!
Santiago?
Here!

like soldiers
they duce up
shouldertoshoulder
at attention
kids bubbling with enthusiasm
like a bottle of shaken soda
they march from the Brightwood middle school lot
past brick buildings,
sneakers dangling from telephone pole wires
soles clapping in the wind
before their march evolves into skips and jumps
laughter and flicking of ears
treading through leaves ankle deep
past hasty covered gang signs and beats booming out of tinted cars
they cross the street
to the other side

Barbosa?
here!
Johnson?
here!
Brown?
here!

stop and see
a soccer field 50 yards away
so green
so open
like the sky
caged yet free
away from the world
&
"on your marks! Get set!"
and they are off
before I can say go
and I laugh
with a lump in my throat
hands folded in my sweat jacket
in a silent prayer
for Brightwood.

PC coaches attend Youth Media Summit @ MHC

Loeb Rosario and Dawayne Henry, accompanied by PC Media Director Will Bangs, and Program Director Andy Wood, yesterday attended the first Youth Media Summit for the Pioneer Valley, held at Mount Holyoke College.

Loeb and Dawayne, who represent the first cohort of coaches to be trained in media production by Will, joined other youth program participants and workers as they collectively shared ideas and concepts to help further the media components of their respective programs. Throughout the day, both coaches participated tremendously in group discussions and workshop activities, and networked with adults in a manner in which both the Media and Program Directors were extremely proud.

The highlight of the day - other than a great lunch and post-conference Friendly's stop that Loeb and Dawayne clearly enjoyed - saw both coaches present and discuss two of their video productions to the audience, before fielding a number of questions from delegates who were visibly impressed by what they saw.

All four PC attendees thoroughly enjoyed the day, and look forward to attending future summits over the course of the semester.

Project Coach on TV!

This past Wednesday, Project Coach was delighted to host Jackie Brousseau and her team from NBC news affiliate WWLP Springfield 22 News at the first annual Project Coach retreat held at Smith College.







The media's visit proved to be one of the highlights of a successful day's coaching and learning - interspersed with a good dose of fun! - as coaches experienced a wide range of activities while on campus. After Co-Founder Sam Intrator had already visited the News 22 studio earlier in the morning to film a live interview during the morning broadcast, the day began with Exercise and Sports Science professor - and fellow PC Co-Founder - Don Siegel, along with department colleagues, leading coaches through a series of sports science lab experiments that challenged our teens to think about the application of power and balance in sports, and how such data is collected and processed. Graduate assistant Will Bangs proved to be the show-stopper at this event, defying college and high school basketball players to claim the vertical leap crown with a whopping 29 inches!

Next, the coaches worked with their redshirts in the Smith gym to refine their coaching styles ahead of next week's first 'live' session with one hundred elementary school athletes, before heading down to the squash courts to participate in a racquetball clinic kindly hosted by Smith College Squash Coach, Tim Bacon. Coaches quickly took to the sport, and were appreciative of Coach Bacon's knowledge, instruction, and great sense of humor!

Before breaking for lunch, coaches had time for one more workshop, this time generously led by Kia Johnson and her team of theater students. PC youth worked alongside their college counterparts to hone their "coaching voice", develop positive body language, and practice quick and effective methods of communication.

After the success of the February retreat, plans are already underway for a follow-up session during the April vacation.







http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/local/Project-coach-shows-teens-new-skills

http://www.wwlp.com/dpp/news/local/program-turns-city-teens-into-coaches

Guest Post from Stacie Vos: About Using the Project Model in New Haven

A Little Trick Sometimes Called Community Service

I first heard about Project Coach from a Smith Alumna who shared with me the opportunity to study at Smith through a PC Fellowship. At the time I was teaching in New Haven as a Teach for America Corps Member, and this program seemed like a wonderful opportunity for teenagers, especially teenagers who face social inequality. Not only does PC offer the opportunity to take responsibility and ownership by leading a team, but it offers the real sense of accomplishment that becomes possible through athletics. 

I am now working on mentoring programming at a non-profit organization called the Women and Family Life Center in Guilford, Connecticut. Before I joined the organization, the Program Director described a number of challenges around getting girls to show up for events. We realized that so many women, let alone very young women, resist coming forward to discuss potential and real problems in their lives. We began to think that girls might be more interested to join in programs if they were focused on helping others in the community, or if there were some activity around which the programming was based, or both.

Hence Girls Coach/Girls Run. Right now we are working with 10 high school girls from the "shoreline" area of Guilford, which means we are working in three towns. The high school girls are learning about communication, problem solving, motivation, self esteem, friendship, and media influence. We have drawn from the Project Coach curriculum to address topics like communicating with team members. In our next session, we will pull in middle school girls to work as assistant coaches. The high schoolers will lead the new participants through a similar curriculum, only this time there will be room for running, stretching, and discussing nutrition and health. This curriculum will be run a second time in the spring, when coaches and assistant coaches lead a group of 4th graders to run a 5K. 

I think that programs like GCGR and Project Coach hit upon a fundamental point, which is that sometimes young people help themselves best by helping others first. I can already hear our high school coaches express their ideas about how to best serve the 4th graders who will join us this April, but I also know that the work these girls are doing right now, even before meeting the younger ones, is just as crucial.


Read about GCGR in an article in the New Haven Register