Christina

My second week of placement. On Thursday the sessions are different from the Friday and I wanted to see all aspects of Tony’s classes while on work experience.  Thursday first session was at Dunblane primary school and was a cricket session.  I felt a bit clueless for this session as I know very little about cricket.  The class was mixed age groups.  There was only 1 girl at the class although some students weren’t there this week due a school trip.  Tony told me the plan for the session and what I was going to help with and it seemed relatively straight forward.  He also told me that he had, had to have a meeting with the school the previous week due to the behaviour of some of the participants.  He hoped that with the support of the school and the parents their behaviour would improve.  During the session I was coaching a group of the children in throwing and catching.  Some of the boys started playing around and not listening and I had to try and explain to them the importance of practicing these skills with games coming up.  Tony later had to talk to them about behaviour and I found it frustrating that they didn’t listen.  I thought about this and remembered how I was at their age and then felt sorry for my teachers as I was much the same,  easily distracted, chatting when I should have been listening and playing around.  This made me smile but also fell sympathy for the coaches.

The second session was at Dunblane High School and was a floorball session for S1’s.  I was really excited about this session after my training at the weekend.  There was about 17 pupils in the session only 1 girl which I found a shame as it is a great sport.  Tony said that there had been 2 or 3 more last year but they hadn’t carried it on.  I now understood why the Great Britain female team manager was doing ladies come and try sessions around the UK to try and encourage more female players in the sport.
This session the pupils were split into 3 teams and they played games rotating the teams.  It was a good session just to be able to  watch the games and see how talented some of the pupils were.  This was a really fun session and I really enjoyed it.   I had planned to stay on for the Floorball club sessions at the high school but I was choked with the cold so decided to give it a miss this week.

On Friday I was due to go to the Dunblane Centre for the afternoon sessions but my cold had gotten worse and so I had to email Tony and tell him I wouldn’t be able to attend.  I had considered  going but I was sneezing and coughing a lot. I didn’t want to let Tony down or miss out on placement hours but I had to think about other factors such as  the chance of passing it on to the other coaches or the children and then, them not being able to attend.  I believe that this was the right thing to do and I feel better and ready for my placement this week.