The morning session of the 14th of February was back at Swinderby, with the same group as last week. One change was that a child, who wasn’t present in the week before, had learning difficulties, he was called Charlie. The teacher informed us that he just needs to keep being informed of what to do. Although this added a harder concept to the coaching of the session it also added a massive goal. I had worked in a classroom environment with children with learning disabilities before, but not in a coaching environment. My goal was to see whether I could provide a session for all to enjoy without making durastic changes.
I enforced my ‘Relax’ ruling again, running Charlie through the rules of when I coach and he appeared, similarly to the others to respond to this ruling in a positive manner. However, this response didn’t last long, and Charlie began to take longer and longer to stop, which in turn allowed other members of the group to continue doing so. Applying different coaching tactics (Galton, 1980) allowed me to create a different way of stopping the session, using Charlie. I informed the group, that Charlie was now going to be my deputy policeman, and if he or I shouted relax, it still meant the session had to stop. So each time I wanted the session to stop, I organised with Charlie that if I asked Charlie a prompt question like: ‘Charlie do you need a rest?’ He would then no that in a short space of time after he would shout relax.
I felt this was a perfect way of combatting the slight misbehaviours of the group, and also encouraging Charlie to remain focused throughout the session whilst still enjoying it.
References
Galton, M., Simon,B. & Croll, P. (1980) Inside the Primary Classroom. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.