ROBBY SMITH
Synthesis Essay
A Passion I Cannot Live Without
By: Robby Smith
Date: 8/7/15
What is that one thing you cannot live without? To some it is exercise, others it is teaching or volunteering or giving back. I do not believe many people would say that their job or career is what they cannot live without. Fortunately for me, my career within athletics is something that has been a passion of mine since the very beginning. Growing up, I never quite knew what I wanted to do until I got involved in sports. Athletics is where I really found a passion that I could not live without. Even today, I love everything about sports; the dedication, hard work, sacrifice, mental toughness, pressure, adrenaline of game day, the countless hours of practice and preparation, and most of all the bond and enjoyment that is surrounded by the sport.
As a participant, I was taught by my numerous coaches to work hard, never give up, do things the right way, and always give back. Through sport I always had a mentor, coach, or teacher that was able to challenge me to be the best that I could be. Sports provided me an opportunity to grow as an athlete but even more so as a person. My coaches provided guidance into life lessons and a structure of great morals for a young adult. This is where I really found my passion; I want to help and mentor young athletes and mold them into hard working, appreciative, and successful individuals.
The first couple of graduate courses that I took in the MAED program were Kinesiology courses. These courses had more of a focus on athletics and athletic administration, which allowed me to grow and develop my professional career. My favorite Kinesiology courses were KIN 854 - Legal and Administrative Issues for Coaches and KIN 856 - Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes. These two courses really developed me as a professional to work within college athletics.
KIN 854 - Legal and Administrative Issues for Coaches, was by far the best course that I took during graduate school. Many educators may not agree that this course is the most beneficial for teachers but for me, wanting to make a career working in athletics, this was the best course I had ever taken. This course allowed me to look at real life legal and administrative scenarios within athletics or from an athletic director/coach point of view and take action. This course was vital for my professional growth as it taught me the 4 tenets of negligence (duty, breach, cause, and damage) as well as tort law. Many educators may not find this course useful but I would disagree as it provided a great overview of how situations are handled at an administrative level. Different scenarios in academics and athletics will arise at some point and understanding ways to handle these different situations will be very pivotal in my career in athletic administration.
While those coaching and sport administrator courses were beneficial in my professional career, I still needed help to bridge the gap of understanding on what educators needed and wanted from student-athletes. The MAED program would provide me with valuable information to allow me to teach, mentor, and educate athletes to become the best STUDENT-athletes they can be.
In athletics, I have found that we invest a lot of time, energy, and hard work into people. We invest in the people all around athletics. We invest in the workers, the athletes, and the fans. We invest in these people because they all matter to us and they all play a part in keeping athletics moving forward. Until my MAED program, I had never looked at education from that perspective of investing in people.
EAD 801 - Leadership and organizational development, was able to provide me with a whole new outlook on education. Teachers are not just going into work every day, giving lesson plans and then leaving. They are also investing in their student. As a teacher you are trying to mentor and grow individuals to become lifelong learners, in hopes that your investment will pay off for the future generations. Teachers are inspiring young adults to be the best they can be because teachers can see the payout on their investment and know it will be of great magnitude.
In closing, my graduate degree and master’s courses have not only helped me become a better worker within college athletics but even more so it has allowed me to grow as an educator, leader, and mentor for my student-athletes. Without the knowledge that I have gained over the past couple of years, I would not be the person or even in the position that I am in today. I feel confident that I can and will help lead, teach, mentor, and mold young men and women into fine individuals and even better people. Educators are the lifeline to our youth and the future; I cannot thank my graduate program enough for instilling lifelong learning into me. I will never stop learning, adapting, and growing as an individual both personally and professionally. Learning and educating is now truly a passion that I cannot live without.
Professional Growth through Academics
Final Remarks
Understanding and Investing in Your Students
At the time of applying for graduate school, I had just completed my undergraduate degree from Michigan State University with a Bachelor’s of Science in Kinesiology. At that time I also started working part-time within the athletic department as a director of operations for softball. While working, my professional mentors kept telling me that I needed to continue learning and growing as an individual to further my professional career. When looking into graduate programs, I was trying to find a program that would help me in both of those areas. Luckily for me, Michigan State University provided a Master’s of Arts in Education (MAED) with a concentrated area in Sports Leadership and Coaching. The program seemed to fall right into place for me. Not only was this graduate program all online, which was good if I happened to get a full-time job somewhere, but it was also at a school that I had invested so much time into.
The MAED graduate program provided me with an opportunity to learn more about teaching and allow me to add education into my professional background. This opportunity would show me how to help teach students-athletes and grow my passion for mentoring these young adults. I felt the MAED program would help bridge the gap between academics and athletics. This was a huge selling point for me because I want to work in athletics the rest of my life and I felt that I need to know more about the academic side of helping student-athletes. After being accepted into the MAED program, I was a little nervous if I was going to be able to bridge that gap between academics and athletics, since I had no teaching experience. At first it seemed that most of the students enrolled were going to be or already were teachers and a majority of them were bringing classroom experience to our courses. While many of the courses asked for teaching examples, I was able to relate my athletics background to the course material from a coaching and student-athlete perspective. To me, teachers and coaches are one in the same, just in a different setting. Many of my instructors and classmates enjoyed hearing my feedback because I gave it from a perspective outside the normal classroom setting.
One of the most powerful discussions that I had with my classmates about negligence was when we talked about Mike Leach and the Texas Tech football player that had a concussion. If you don’t know the story, the brief version is that a football player had a concussion and the coach sent him to a small dark “locker room” to help him recover. Well there was more to the story but the point I am trying to make is that these are real life situations that happen for sport administrators. During this course I was able to take this scenario, look over the facts and make a judgement on how to handle it as an administrator. Legal and Administrative Issues for Coaches was a very eye opening course for me and the profession I want to get involved in because it showed the legal side of athletics, the side that most people do not get a chance to see.
KIN 856 - Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes was another Kinesiology course that was specific to athletics. This course had a coaching element that was really great for my professional career. Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes, not only allowed me to look at what I was teaching my student-athletes but also how, where, when and why I was teaching them certain things. I was able to take off my coaching hat and look at what I was doing through a teacher’s perspective. This course allowed me to create fact sheets on nutrition to help fuel my student-athletes; it also allowed
My passion is to teach, mentor, and educate student-athletes in their quest for excellence.
me to develop a practice plan from a functional stand point and not a coaching perspective. Many times as a coach you have a list of items you want to cover, well your athletes are vulnerable to different information at different points in practice and games which many factors should be accounted for. For instance, you wouldn’t try explaining a complex offensive scheme towards the end of practice after the team has just run sprints. The team is tired, which causes a lack of concentration and their ability to comprehend complex information is hindered so developing a proper practice plan can benefit your athlete in gaining information.
Physical Bases of Coaching Athletes also gave me a brief overview into what teachers go through. Teachers are consistently finding different ways to motivate and help students understand information. I was able to create different platforms for my student-athletes to learn, understand and comprehend the information I was trying to teach. For a basketball jump shot, I was able to develop a written explanation on how the jump shot should look, feel and what the body should be doing. In addition, I was able to create a video showing what a correct jump shot looks like and what your body should be doing.
What was very eye opening for me was that education and athletics are very similar in that aspect of investing in people. My course work also provided me with different strategies to motivate, mentor, and teach young adults. Not all people learn the same, so you need to find that one thing that helps the information stick in their head. For some it is visual, others it is verbal, and some even have to physical perform what is being taught. It was my graduate course work that really engrained in me that not all people learn the same so going that extra mile and investing in them will pay off.
CEP 800 - Psychology of learning in school, also taught me in order to invest in people; you need to get to know these people. Often times we have perceived notions about an individual, this gives us a different approach on how we may teach or coach them. In order to invest in someone, you need to get to know them, especially with young adults. Young adults are often troubled by many different things and they look up to teachers and coaches. If a young adult feels comfortable, needed, and useful by a teacher or coach, then they are more apt to follow directions and learn the information presented to them. Understanding what your students need to be successful will be a big part in how I will help mentor and teach my student-athletes. I will need to know more about my student-athletes before I will be able to help lead them. It was the MAED program that introduced me to getting to know your students or in my case student-athletes. These student-athletes are going to be the face of your program and you want them to feel that you are invested.
Invest in yourself, your students, and your athletes!!!!!
