The Teesra

Author: Andrew Beaven

  • Culture — from the professional game to the U9s

    Culture — from the professional game to the U9s

    Last week, I sat in on a webinar, organised by Essex Cricket in the Community (ECiC), that featured a talk from Anthony McGrath, Head Coach of the 2019 County Championship and T20 Blast Double Winners.

    I was fascinated to hear about the culture that “Mags” is creating in the 1st XI Squad at Chelmsford and, importantly, how that same culture applies across the Academy and Development Pathway.

    Maybe this sort of sharing goes on all the time. I have little contact with the development pathway or the pro game.

    But as a grassroots children’s coach, I find this sort of information really helpful. If I am to shape a culture in the environment I work in (coach as environmental and cultural engineer), surely it makes sense if it can match that higher up the pathway (assuming that culture is healthy and positive, of course — this most certainly seems to be).

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  • Reflections on and with Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles

    In recent posts I have reflected on the toolkit available to coaches, and on the ways that different tools can be applied.

    We talk of “random” or “game” practices, of Practice vs. Play, of Constraints-Led vs. Games Sense activities, but very often the description applied to each coaching style or intervention is poorly defined, especially in terms of who does what.

    So perhaps we need some tools to help with reflection.

    One such is Mosston’s Spectrum of Teaching Styles.

    Mosston’s Spectrum is a classification of teaching styles with decision making as a central defining characteristic — when the decisions are taken (pre-delivery, delivery, post) and by whom (teacher or learner).

    I was interested to find out more from the recently published tome The Spectrum of Teaching Styles in Physical Education, edited by Brendan SueSee, Mitch Hewitt & Shane Pill.

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  • Anniversary Post — The Teesra Turns Ten

    Today marks an anniversary for The Teesra.

    The first recorded visit to a post on theteesra.wordpress.com was on 2nd May, 2010. The blog existed on a a different platform before this (and, indeed, the earliest posts on this site are dated from 2009), but stats on wordpress.com begin on 2nd May, 2010.

    An auspicious day — 2nd May is also my wedding anniversary!

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