If you enjoy my content and want to express gratitude, I would be so happy if you made a contribution towards my Argentina trip in the summer of 2021. The plan is to go there for four weeks and look at everything football, development, coaching, and culture. Any amount helps. I won't be upset if you ignore this message, as I produce this content purely for the enjoyment of it. Here is the link: http://fnd.us/c1en5f?ref=sh_98yL48
At the beginning of writing this piece, I am now two weeks into working in a primary school in England. My job is to take PE lessons in the afternoon. They are outsourcing their sporting needs. In the past, I have spent a lot of time delivering sport in English schools. Now, I am in a far more prevalent role, and interact with every child in the school, not just those who register for clubs. These children are 6-11.
I feel I should begin by first acknowledging my privileged upbringing. How many of us are truly aware of the fortune granted to us at birth? On paper, you might be aware that your childhood was not typical. For instance, my childhood might be portrayed as normal, but it's not the average experience of kids across the country. Let me list some of the normalities I experienced;
Two parent family. I always had two loving adults that were present in my life.
Big house. Not necessarily massive, but I had my own space.
Garden. I had space out the front and the back to run around and to play.
Vacations. As a kid, I learned about the world beyond my own neighbourhood, and beyond Butlins holiday parks.
Safe area. We lived in an area of low crime. I could meet my friends, and be outside on my own.
Well fed. We always had food on the table. The quality of food would have been high.
Sports clubs and activities. In the evenings and on weekends, I could play football, and had opportunities for other activities, like guitar lessons.
Parent play. My parents were busy, but there was always one of them around to engage with me, listen to me, and play with me.
Toys. Not spoiled in the sense that I had every console and game imaginable, like many of my classmates, but I certainly had enough at home to keep me occupied, and to stretch my imagination.
There's probably more that I have neglected too. I have wondered why some of the kids are the way they are, and realised that many of them aren't getting too many ticks on the above list. Some of them struggle to hold conversations, but then maybe their parents aren't around, nor are they as intelligent and engaging as mine. A lot of these kids really struggle with basic agility, balance, and coordination. Out of a group of thirty, there will only be three kids who can likely do more than five or even ten juggles of a football. That's understandable if they have no garden at home, can't go outside to play, have limited parental engagement, and the family has no money or means for the child to participate in extra curricular sporting activities. They struggle to catch. They struggle to perform actions while moving. They struggle to assess a situation and change their mind in the moment.
Please don't view this as me ripping on the kids. They are the way they are. What I'm trying to do is to assess that, figure out what is causing it, and then try to combat it. This pieces is me thinking out loud and asking questions. Another example is that their fitness is incredibly low. The majority of them struggle to be active for even short lengths of time without needing a rest. Some of that can be the pandemic, and how they have been inactive for six months, but I think even without the pandemic, they probably don't have many nutritious meals, aren't playing or competing much in their spare time, and might not have the best environment at home to rest and recuperate. If your diet is bad, your recovery bad, and you don't exercise much, stamina will not increase.
The experience of these kids is completely different to mine. They enjoy school. I loathed school. They love their teachers. I hated my teachers. These kids are built up, protected, encouraged, and enabled. We were ridiculed, intimidated, humiliated, and scolded. From 3-16, I can count the teachers I had any warm feelings for on one hand. We were at a strict private school, rather old fashioned, that felt like it was run by people who hated kids. What I'm sensing nowadays, is that the kids see school, especially their teachers, as an extended family. Some teachers are like a second mum or dad to these kids, or even, sadly, a first mum or dad.
When I think back, separated parents in our school was very rare. If it occured, it happened when the child was a teenager. A lot of the kids I'm working with have absent parents from very early on in their lives. These kids are poor, and lower working class. At my school, everyone was upper working class or middle class. So much learning occurs via peer-to-peer interactions. Our home lives, and the privileged situations we were afforded at birth, made us generally brighter pupils. Therefore, the quality of our peer-to-peer interactions would have been significantly higher. I was a kid, so had no way of measuring this, but I remember them saying how we were two years ahead of kids who didn't go to our school. Maybe with that in my mind, I looked for it, and had that preconceived bias confirmed, but the number of genuinely thick kids was very low. And they didn't last long. Needless to say, our environment was one of elitism, whereas for the majority of children across the country, their environments are being shaped towards inclusion.
Typically, there are two main problems when dealing with the groups of kids at primary school age. The boys struggle to listen and focus. The girls make up injuries to avoid playing. I always believe this to be a societal cause, not a biological one, because girls can be sporty, and boys can listen. It comes back to "boys will be boys" being an excuse to enable certain undesired behaviour. If girls were to act in the same way, they would be scolded, and reminded those actions are not very lady like. This creates a strange divergence between the mortal enemies of the playground; Boys v Girls. When I meet a class and talk about expected behaviour, I joke that it's always boys that can't listen. The boys are deeply offended by this, and one of them pipes up in defence with he feels is a real "Gotcha!" "But you're a boy!" he will exclaim. The whole group of boys collectively sigh in relief as I am reminded of my gender, like it disproves the claim. "Yes, and that's how I know" I reply. Panic stations. The boys now scramble as they look for another method of defence. Many concede defeat, but two have gone nuclear, almost resigned now to the validity of my claim, but still wanting me to take it back. They resort to loyalty, something boys are programmed from birth to believe in. They label me as a traitor. It's all said in jest, and we have a good laugh about it, but I do believe it to be indicative of how society shapes boys to view the world. The position relays that we have committed to a stance, and we will persevere with that stance, even in the face of contradictory evidence, because our loyalty to each other is more important than our loyalty to the truth.
See Brexit, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein, Donald Trump, Boris Johnson, Republicans, Conservatives, and the case of Football Fans v The Referee.
Sorry. Everything is political.
Another factor that I believe we took for granted is the wide range of kids within one class. I'll try and explain that better with a diagram.
Everything is an interaction between the organism and the environment to complete the task. The organism (individual) is the kid, with their personality, their mood, their physical and mental state (tired, annoyed, happy), their physical traits, their attributes, their biases, preferences, and their decision making frameworks. The environment is everything external, from teammates to opponents, including the surface of the playing area, the referee, the weather, and so many more factors. The task is what they are supposed to do, whether as an individual as a team, small and compartmentalised (take up this position when you see this picture, or throw the ball like this) and big and broad (score more points than the other team to win the game).
I've established that I believe the individuals at my posh private school were quite different to typical primary school kids around the UK. That means the individual is more adept at the tasks (organism), and the environment is saturated with other individuals that are also adept at the task. I think not only were the numbers in our school much smaller (our typical class size was between ten and fifteen) but that also the range of different characteristics was significantly more narrow. Last week, in one class, I had a class of nine-year-olds, where one boy plays academy football at a professional club, and another girl can't speak in full sentences, and has been known to "Moo" at her teachers when greeting them. That's a considerably wide range of kids within that one environment. And, I am not stating a preference for working with one type of kid or the other, nor am I saying that one kid is more deserving of my time and attention. What I'm hoping to convey is the difficulties associated with working with that broad a range of kids. 25-30 of them, versus 10-15 of us when I was growing up. Smaller numbers and a narrower range of kids made classroom management significantly easier for my teachers, and as a result, bad behaviour was incredibly rare.
Let me just clarify something real quick. I don't believe that a kid who is acting out is a bad kid. The actions they are performing don't necessarily have bad intentions behind them. Not listening, calling out, not standing in line, fidgeting, bouncing balls etc. are just behaviours of kids who aren't able to behave in the desired ways in those moments. A great post on Twitter this morning talked about instead of viewing kids as "attention seeking" try to view them as "connection seeking."
Another difference, which has put me way outside of my comfort zone, is that although I have twelve years of working with kids on three different continents, for well over 90% of it, I have worked with groups of half this size, and in environments where they want to be there. Kids register for football, they come to me to improve. It's a much simpler dynamic. A lot of the kids I'm dealing with now, aren't that bothered about me or what I'm going to be doing with them. They could take it or leave it. Some of them don't like it at all. I'm used to working with around ten to fifteen players, who want to be there, who want to learn, and know that listening to me is required, due to the dynamic of our relationship. In a school setting, probably less than 30% of kids in the class feel the same way about me, or hold those similar motivations to my regular footballers. The rest all have different levels of motivation and desire, and thus, their behaviours are affected by their motivations. This is a big part of the "range" I'm talking about when it comes to kids in any given environment.
It is my ambition to change how we do sport. Sport can bring so much joy and meaning to a person's life. Whether it is team sports, winning, achieving, improving, being part of a group, keeping fit, there's so much in it for everybody. At the youngest ages, we have to teach basic fundamentals that will help develop an athlete for life. We're giving them tools they can take with them. For too many kids, they don't have positive associations with sport. For me, it was first playing with my dad. Then my cousins. Then my mates at school. Then in teams. It all built from an initial love of the game, which came about through interaction and connections. It's fun to run around, to compete, to learn new things, and to bond with special people. I don't know if that is the experience that enough kids are able to have. Perhaps they haven't had the opportunity to build those positive associations, and therefore view sport as a chore, or a distraction. Maybe even something to hide from, as they don't want to be exposed.
All this factors into my ambition. It would be great if England, or whatever country I happen to be in, win something at the top level. Even more important, though, is that we have a generation of adults that are mentally and physically healthy. They need to be active, and they need to be interacting. Sport helps us belong, and it gives us something to strive for. I want our young kids to have the opportunities to be whatever they want to be. If they just want to play for fun and be with their mates, that's great. We should be able to offer that. If they want to push on, take it seriously, and try to develop into something special, that's also great, and that should be on offer too. And everything in between.
Maybe so much of it comes from not questioning our mindsets and our establishments. Something that travel has brought me is perspective. People from different cultures, do things differently. Only experiencing limited parts of the world limits your perspective, and makes it harder to think outside the box. That's why it's hard to get governing bodies to switch to more age appropriate versions of football, and why it is hard for futsal to catch on. I'll reference the 3v3 tournament I did in Missouri. 3v3 is not uncommon, and is often used as a gimmick money grab. We did it for cheap, and the competition format was a ladder. It's novel, but it kept the kids playing, engaged, and always gave them something to strive for. Experience as a player, ref, and coach, has given me multiple perspectives from which to view how we do sport, and I think that helps in my quest to make player-friendly, engaging formats. It surprises people, because they might view my background and education and think I'm Mr. Serious, which is not the case at all. I am serious about football and about my education, and what that has taught me is that; learning is more effective with a smile, and playing sport without a smile is a waste of time.
If we make it more fun, we retain participants for longer. Kids, then adults, stay in and contribute to the game, for much longer. But that's not all, as fun is essentially intrinsic motivation. If people enjoy it, they'll care more, and take it more seriously. I've worked in environments with high level players, and we would all think it's 100% serious all the time. That's not the case. Professional athletes love sport, and they have a lot of fun doing it. And as Tom Byer says, if we raise the floor we raise the ceiling.
I definitely need to do a lot more studying and observing. I'm starting a master's tomorrow in Football Coaching, and will hopefully do a PGCE next year. I'm currently leaning towards secondary school. I need to spend some time in that environment. I need to get to know modern kids a bit more profoundly than I do from just my football perspective. I need to know what makes them tick. That's when I can help shape environments to be more appealing to them, that are better suited to their needs. For a long time, I've thought that I would like to run after school clubs on the following sports; futsal, volleyball, badminton, handball, and basketball. Those sports are great fun on their own, with the added benefit being the transferable skills to a whole range of other sports. They are fantastic sports, while also acting as gateway sports to a whole wide range of other physical activities.
Something which concerns me greatly is the amount of schools who have banned ball sports during break times. Depending on the timetable, that could be thirty to sixty minutes of physical activity per day removed. Sure, not every kid would play, but I think the option should be there for them. I would even love to help facilitate that. There's enough responsible adults around during break times. Excuses I have heard are that there is an injury risk = coddling. Another is to avoid conflict = coddling. We used to argue about whether the ball was in or not when it was shot over someone's bag that we were using as a goal post. It was annoying at times. But it taught us to argue, debate, compromise, negotiate, and deal with hurt feelings. These are all learning opportunities. I get it, though. Parents are a nightmare, and with most people in schools feeling stressed and overworked, they may simply be taking the path of least resistance.
Some will say that kids can still do sport, like having races, but that is deathly boring. Who wins? The fastest kid. Want to race again? No thanks. We know who will win. That's not fun for kids. In the sports I mentioned earlier, children can have a whole range of advantages and disadvantages, because of how dynamic the games are and the variables associated with them. One kid might have a size advantage, but the other kid has a technique advantage. One kid might be faster where another might be stronger. One kid might be disadvantaged in this area, but could be really intelligent, and reads the game well. In team sports, everyone feels like they can contribute in some way. And if the game gets too one sided, kids take charge, and will mix teams or change rules. They become the agents and the drivers of their own play. How often might you hear of children who struggle to entertain themselves without an electronic device? That might be because we're taking away opportunities for them to learn how to play in unstructured ways.
In another article I have been working on recently, which should be finished soon, I ask where the future is coming from. That's aimed more at professional football. I have definitely noticed a change in the atmosphere at grassroots football games since I was last in England. It will certainly help keep kids in the game for longer. I really want to know what we can do in schools. And I need to learn more about the national curriculum, and see how much could or should be applied to a school on an individual basis. As I said earlier on, the school I am working at is completely different to the school I attended as a kit. There needs to be some core principles to learn on a national scale, but maybe what, how, and how much, depends on the individual school during any specific moment.
I'll report back more as time goes by and I learn more.
