I have been a big fan of the PCA since I first encountered them in 2009 when, as a part of my US Lacrosse Level 1 Coaching Certification, I became a Double Goal certified coach. The PCA philosophy is embedded in the way I coach. My two proudest moments as a coach are when a number of players on my 2013 JV lacrosse team told me they’d never had more fun playing a sport, and after the 2014 season (my first as a varsity coach, taking over a rebuilding program) when I was told by a parent that she really appreciated the way we stayed positive and kept lacrosse fun despite an 8 game losing streak to start the year. This season, as a part of stressing effort and attitude, and with our players buying in to that completely, the wonderful, unexpected byproduct of fantastic effort and attitude was setting the school wins record. I say all of this because I really believe in what the PCA teaches, and I know it works. However, because I am not a full time coach, I am a High School English teacher too, I saw a fantastic opportunity to apply the PCA Philosophy to my classroom teaching after participating in a Double-Goal workshop and Jim Thompson’s Program Leader culture building session at the 2016 US Lacrosse Convention.

I actually started the process the next day sitting at BWI waiting to board my flight. I took the copy of Positive Coaching In A Nutshell I’d gotten at LaxCon and started re-reading and putting notes in the margins of how I could adapt to my English classes. When I got home, I started adapting this to my teaching, and shared it with my colleagues. Here is a sample of what I adapted:

1. Pg. 9: “It is assumed that if taught properly, the athletes will learn.” –This applies to teachers too! We often catch ourselves saying/thinking “well I taught them the right way, it is their fault they didn’t get it”
2. Pg. 11 The Magic Ratio—often we tell our students what they did not do instead of letting them know what they did. It was really eye-opening when I realized how much I handed my students criticism.
3. Pg. 19 Expecting Kids To Think—our students are not knowledge depositories, we want them to think!
4. Chapter 4 and the E Tank—this was the biggest thing I worked on. I realized that when coaching, I always make sure to be positive and pointing out what was good, even when giving criticism. I was not doing that while teaching, or my feedback when something was good was simply “good”. I really tried (and am trying still!) to step up my game with the E-Tank and my students.
5. The ELM Tree of Mastery---I think this is missing in a lot of the Education world. We’re so obsessed with testing and grades that we forget the value of mistakes and failure. We don’t provide low stakes opportunity to screw up (practice!) or make it possible to screw up in a higher-stakes environment and bounce back (every team loses, what did you learn from that). The equivalent in education is that we reward the W (or the grade/score) no matter what. We don’t take a long view and think about the consequences of not teaching our students to make mistakes in order to learn, or of the importance of effort. I’m as guilty as anyone else, but I am really trying to change!

This is a small sampling of what I took from Positive Coaching In A Nutshell, and the PCA Philosophy in general. It has made a big difference, especially when trying to change the attitude of some students who hadn’t done well. Celebrating the success of every student, whatever that meant for that student was awesome. I had one student who had failed first semester, and after we sat down and talked, he agreed to try harder. I kept pointing out to him what he did well, and did not lose my cool when he took a step back. It worked, beyond my expectations, and he passed the next quarter with a C, and was excited to do his work, taking responsibility and asking for anything that was missing. That made me as happy as any student who got an A. I have one final story about combining two of my favorite PCA-isms for using in my teaching practice. I have a 9th grader, he is a very nice kid, who wants to be liked by everyone. Unfortunately, that does not always manifest itself well, and he devolves into attention seeking behavior. He decided to go that direction on the day I was being observed by my Assistant Principal (of course!). I would engage him positively, I stayed calm (it’s contagious!) and ignored the unwanted behavior. However my administrator finally couldn’t handle his behavior and told him he was headed to the office with her when she left if he kept it up. When we had our post-observation meeting she asked me how I could put up with the behavior of the student without blowing up. I thought about it, and responded that calm is contagious and he just wanted a rise out of me and blowing up would have derailed everyone’s learning too. And, it really was not the way we do things here in my classroom. The culture I’ve built tries hard to avoid negativity and outbursts.

I am still growing my own ELM Tree of Mastery when it comes to using the PCA methods in my classroom—I’m nowhere near perfect, and my adaption is not close to complete. But I have seen a noticeable and immediate impact in all of my classes, and I am excited to be continuing down this road.