SPSU9W6 – Sports Work Experience (Spring 2020)

Since my previous blog post I have been continuing to try and arrange my work experience placement at Dunblane High School. However, unfortunately, I have encountered some challenges which have hindered my progress so far. Prior to my previous post I had arranged to meet with Hazel Dean, the active schools coordinator for Dunblane High School, at the school on the afternoon of the 6^th of February. I was looking forward to this meeting as it presented an opportunity for me to meet the PE staff, who I would be looking to work alongside. However, before this meeting could take place, I was informed by Hazel that regrettably she would be off work from the 3^rd to the 7^th of February, and so would not be able to attend the meeting. Hazel informed me that she had contacted Graeme Watson, the head of the PE department at Dunblane High School, on my behalf and was hopeful that I might be able to meet with him despite her absence. Unfortunately, the meeting with Graeme did not go ahead and so I re-contacted Hazel the following week to try and arrange another date. Due to school holidays and conflicting work schedules the earliest date we have been able to arrange for me to attend my work experience placement is the 27^th of February.

So far, I have found this process slightly frustrating as I am excited to get started on my placement and also concerned about having to complete my hours later in the semester when I also have my dissertation to focus on. My concerns were alleviated, however, after attending my mid semester review with Romie. Despite not having had an opportunity to complete the placement tracker with my mentor, Romie was very encouraging and assured me that I should not worry about not having started my placement at this point.

Irrespective of the fact I have not yet begun my work experience I still feel like the module has been beneficial for me. The 3^rd seminar class encouraged me to consider my career and my life beyond university. While the hurdles I’ve encountered trying to organise the placement have given me a real insight into the potential difficulties of working with busy professionals who have other responsibilities to attend to beyond what I am seeking to achieve. I feel this will stand me in good stead going forward to set and successfully achieve positive goals in my life.

My strength and conditioning placement is going well and is honestly so interesting. There has been a lot of early morning starts especially when coaching the high performance golf team at 6:45am. Coaching the golf team for their strength and conditioning sessions has been very interesting not just when delivering the sessions but also programming for them. It has been interesting looking into what exercises are going to help with the rotation of the torso to help with the twist when they swing the golf club.

I also got to sit in on a technical coach meeting for all the high performance swim athletes. This was quite interesting as I got to listen in and see how to plan for athletes that are going to be going to compete to qualify for the 2020 Olympic games in Tokyo, this involved discussing what type of training they would be doing in strength and conditioning as well as swimming and general fitness in the months and weeks upcoming to the qualifiers.

I have also been getting the chance to train myself during my work placement. There has been gaps during the day for us as coaches to go and use the gym. I feel this is very important as a coach as it is important to practice what you preach and develop yourself as a coach. I also believe exercise should be incorporated into every job as it is a good way to de stress if you are having a bad day as well as obviously keeping active.

Throughout the rest of this day we coached tennis, high performance swim and had a one to one session with a member of staff from the university who has been having some problems with his running. Avery keen and experienced runner this person was experiencing pains and niggles when running. This member of staff was having problems with his feet so therefore had been seeing a professional who had been helping him with insoles for his shoes, this person also wrote the member of staff a gym programme. He was getting bored of the gym programme and wanted something new and fresh so came to Josh for a new one. We sat down together and spoke through the problems and discussed new exercises to help with things such as the persons balance, mobilisation and just to strengthen the muscles etc.

Excited for next time.

During the two weeks I have spent at my placement, I have become extremely comfortable in overseeing groups and also with the other members of staff. My mentor has been emailing me weekly to keep me up to date with all of the activities that will take place in the upcoming week. This means I know what to expect, and I can help with the preparation process prior to the sessions beginning. In my previous blog I stated that I would be working with a range of age groups. This has provided me with experience with kids of different of abilities, which has meant some activities have had to be adapted in order to suit everyone.

One of the games that was completed by the 3-5-year-old age group was the traffic light game. Each child was provided with a small hula hoop which they used as a steering wheel. While they were pretending to drive their car, a coach would be standing with a red, orange and green coloured matt. This would relate to the traffic lights; if a coach showed the red matt all kids had to stop what they were doing, if the orange matt was raised all kids had to run on the spot and if the green light showed all kids were able to drive freely. This meant the kids had to be observant not only of the change but of each other while running.

During the first week of my placement I attended a dodgeball class which was something that was completely different to anything I have done before. The team take part in competitions and so it was intriguing to see how they played when going up against their own team-mates during practice. It was clear that the kids were very competitive and excited, so at times it proved difficult to try and keep their attention. However, after a bit of time the kids started to calm down and were able to take my instructions very well. The other coaches and I picked two team captains and allowed them to choose their own teammates for the first game which was prison dodgeball. Prison ball is played much like the original dodgeball game, except when a player is hit, he gets put in “prison” behind the opposing team. In order to get out of prison they must catch a ball that is thrown to them by their teammate at the opposite end of the court. This helps to promote teamwork, as the team who has the most players in the game has a much higher chance of winning.

I am learning a lot during my time at coach my sport, and it is giving me a lot to think about when it comes to my future career.

On my second day of placement, I had been asked to plan and deliver two badminton sessions to S2 and S4 pupils. I was nervous about taking these sessions as it was the first time I would be taking my own full classes. For the S2 class I had planned a session which aimed to improve the pupils serve. The session was started by doing a quick warm up. After the warm up I split the class into two teams and got them to serve a shuttle into the other side of the court where there were different coloured hoops scattered around and each colour had a different score. At the end of the drill I counted the scores and the team with the highest score won. I then played a tournament of singles to finish the session off. For the second session, I aimed to improve the pupils overhead clear. After a short warm up, I set up a drill which again used the skill which I was aiming to improve. Overall, the sessions went very well. but the teacher gave me a few things I can work on for next week. For the rest of the day I shadowed the P.E teacher in his different lessons and have been asked to plan one of they lessons as well for next week.

As the weeks have went on I am starting to feel a lot more comfortable at the school. The staff are great with me and I am starting to get to know the pupils better as well. This week there was a lot of snow where I live and I was worried that the school was going to get closed, luckily for me it stayed open which is great as I enjoy going to my work experience every week. Firstly, I observed the national 5 class doing their portfolio’s. During this I seen that there is a big difference in attitudes between pupils when it comes to theory work in P.E, some get on with the tasks whereas others can complain and only want to do practical. As the majority of the class worked well, the teacher let them do practical in the second period. It was amusing to see the work ethic of pupils change when they got told they would be able to do practical P.E if they worked hard on the theory. After break, I helped with a first year class who were doing basketball. This is the same class that had low participation for the swimming block, but almost everyone took part in this activity and worked well. It was great to see them all enjoying it and trying hard and I was pleased everybody in the class was engaging. During the class I was helping the pupils improve their shooting. This then helped them for game situations, and after doing the shooting drills it was pleasing to see the quality of the games improve. At lunch time the snow started to fall heavily and I was worried that the day would get cut short and everybody would get sent home early, however the snow did not last long and the school remained open until the end of the day. The last class I helped with was a second year class on acro-gymnastics.  This is a complex activity and the pupils have to concentrate hard to perform well. The groups were trying to do balances together and many times they failed and collapsed. It was very pleasing though to see the determination in the pupils to keep trying and finally perfect their balances at the end. To conclude, this was another enjoyable day at Hawick High School, and I am learning more every week.

Since my first blog posting I have continued to add to my work experience hours at NL Active Schools. I have continued with the racket sports club at Clarkston Primary School which has been getting better by the day and I am very happy with how much the pupils have progressed through the sessions and how I have managed to keep the sessions both beneficial and entertaining for them. This club will enter its fifth week of six this coming week and I feel I will be pretty upset if I have to leave to go to another school as everyone has been so welcoming to me especially since I was very nervous going to the school on week one.

The basketball club at New Monkland has also been progressing well and I am starting to feel more at ease after every session. This club has completed its third week but a end date is still to be decided for this club. This club has been a great challenge and has definitely took me out of my comfort zone as I have never really been involved in basketball before and have had to put in a lot of effort in terms of learning the sport quickly and keeping up with daily news on the coaching areas surrounding the sport also.

I also took part in a new project over the weekend as I coached at the Club 365 programme on the 8th, 9th and 10th of February. This programme allows children who get free school meals on a school day to turn up and take part in different sports and fun activities, while also receiving a meal which they would usually have got at school. These three sessions were a great experience for coaching but were also quite emotional, as the coaches involved got to really make a difference to the pupils who turned up. These pupils are a part of this programme due to financial struggles at home and the fact that they got to come to these sessions and have fun really showed a different side to sport and showed that sport can bring together a local community when given the chance.

During the reading week I will start more clubs and will be introduced to, two new primary schools (Golfhill and Greengairs). I am very nervous like I was when beginning the first two clubs but also really looking forward to the coming weeks and excited to see how the rest of my placement unfolds!

This week I have been preparing my 2nd draft for my mentor Graeme to email companies about sponsorship oppertunities. I have now submitted that to him and in the process of finalising my third and final draft along with the final set of companies which we would like to sponsor both the Campus 5k and Dumyat Hill Race. After this is complete my next task will be to gain student engagement for both races by advertising the events and also recruiting volunteers.

This week I also met with Romie for a mid semester review. This went very well as we discussed  how the module was going and how I was dealing with its demands. She also reassured myself of gaining enough hours for the course which gave myself peace of mind. Furthermore I spoke to Romie about the other work experience opportunity I have managed to get involved in with Rangers.

I began my work experience with Rangers youth academy around 4 weeks ago as performance analyst. The role gives me the chance to work very experienced and qualified people and athletes in their field. The role provides me with the chance to learn how to use new software to code games and improve my analysis skills by giving constructive criticism back to the players and coaching staff about strengths and weakness when they play. The process has been really easy and enjoyable so far and I gained a PVG and also two different child wellbeing certificate with both the SFA and Rangers themselves. The experience has opened my mind into something that I would be really interested in doing when I leave university. Finally the role is perfect for my dissertation project as it involves Rangers Youth academy and puts me in a place to access interviews much more easily and improve my numbers and therefore my data gathered.

 Two weeks on from my first blog post and I have yet to complete any hours on placement. Towards the beginning of this past week I was beginning to panic slightly that I had not yet managed to get any hours done, especially with the prospect of completing my dissertation over the second half of the semester. However, after meeting with Romie later in the week, I was assured my lack of hours up to this point would not be an issue, much to my relief.

 The hold-up to this point had been due to the wait for PVG approval, something which is essential for this placement when working with the schoolchildren. In good news, the hold-up is no more as my PVG has been approved and I can now get going with the placement. I was surprised at the quick turnaround as I thought I would still have to wait at least another week before approval, although I am very relieved that this stage is out of the way.

 In the meantime, I attended the seminar for the module last Thursday centred on future career planning. For me, this session was extremely helpful as I am coming to the end of my time here at the University. Overall, it helped me gain clarity of thought over what I valued as important in my life, as well as looking forward to what is to come in my immediate future, the medium, and long term. What I found particularly valuable was the opportunity to hear from other students’ experiences so far, and their future career plans. Entering the job market after Uni is something I am slightly concerned about, this session in particular did ease my worries slightly.

 As I mentioned briefly towards the start of this post, I also attended my mid-semester review meeting with Romie during the past week. I was feeling unsure about the meeting beforehand as obviously I had no placement experience to review. Nonetheless, it was important for me to gain the reassurance that this was not something to worry about, meaning I could focus on the other work I have to do without this being at the back of my mind.

Hopefully by the time the next blog post rolls around, I will have some placement experience to share on the blog.

I have been involved in a lot more classes this week at my placement and have had the opportunity to get involved. I have been able to experience what it is like to work with a variety of different ages and skill levels. I get help from other coaches that work for coach my sport and my mentor. This week I was looking forward to be getting involved and helping out again.

I have been working alongside 3 other coaches, including Chelsea who is also doing this module. I was involved in 3 sessions today (Friday 14^th), the first session was with the youngest group and they worked on their balance and their hand-eye coordination, which they were all very good at for their age. They had to balance on certain things like planks of wood, a rope and hula hoops and then at the end of each obstacle they had to either kick or throw a ball through a hoop. The last thing the group done was a game where they had to get from one end of the hall to a small tent which was set up at the other side, without being caught by the person in the middle (who had to try catch them with noodles). This session was the hardest for me to help in as I have never worked with this age group before, but hopefully after a few sessions I will be better.

The children in the next 2 sessions were curling, using small flat discs and also Kan-jam, which I have never heard of before. It involves using a Frisbee and standing behind a bin which is hollow and has a small hole in the front, the children stand behind the bin and take it in turns to try get the frisbee into the bin. They get points if they just hit the side of it. It was a fun game to learn about and be involved in.

I have really enjoyed working with coach my sport so far and looking forward to the rest of my placement.