For this blog post, I’m writing about my KIN597 Portfolio of Evidence assignment for your reading pleasure. Lucky you!

The Portfolio of Evidence assignment requires students to define a specific outcome and purpose, then identify action-oriented objectives for achieving that specific outcome, document their progress with supporting evidence, and finally reflect on both the process and results.

The Problem:

The problem as I see it involves two interconnected failures: First, the sports ecosystem’s pervasive “culture of winning”—reinforced by all LTAD framework implementations—has created numerous harmful outcomes. Second, school-based PHE compounds this issue by failing to provide students with either the foundation for lifelong physical health or the proper preparation for sports participation, worsening the system’s existing flaws.

For one of my KIN586 assignments, I wrote a paper called “Leadership Effectiveness Project:Community Level Intervention to Address the Consequence of the Culture of Winning on the Physical Health Education and Sports Ecosystem in Canada” where I present the research that provides evidence of the shortcomings and consequence of the problem I’ve observed over the years as a strength coach. I encourage you to read it as I include interventions I’ve successfully implemented in my small business and where I discuss the challenges to scale those interventions for the masses. It’s quite an undertaking to come up with a solution to change that culture but one that I believe drastically needs to be addressed.

To summarize my paper, the literature recommends several solutions to these shortcomings and negative consequences all of which point to one common theme: that more education and training for PHE teachers, sport coaches, trainers, and parents is required. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that simply improving the written curriculum or the education level of PHE teachers, coaches, and parents is enough to make positive change in the global landscape of the PHE and sports ecosystem since the culture of winning makes it impossible to focus on successful short-term winning and long-term development simultaneously.

The Outcome:

I believe coaches, sport leaders, and PHE educators need to look at this through a different lens. A lens that isn’t based on short term results like winning the championship year after year. My outcome for this Portfolio of Evidence outlines my proposed solution to this problem:

To develop a holistic teaching model that integrates mind, body, and spirit with a heavy focus on physical health education that prioritizes teaching principles of strength training and movement. This approach replaces the culture of winning with developing a growth mindset culture as it prioritizes holistic, long-term personal development over competition through the participation of sports only.

My mentor Lara Mussell who’s the director of sport from ISPARC helped me establish my objectives to achieving this outcome. In a previous blog post, I wrote how these objectives were developed:

I will now present the evidence demonstrating engagement for each objective below.

Objective #1: Engaging in Indigenous centred training

The purpose of engaging in Indigenous centred training is to continue my personal journey of learning as I continue to decolonize my mind, my coaching practice, and my small business as I work towards meaningful reconciliation. For this graduate certificate year, I’ve attended the following Indigenous training:

The Inclusive Coaching Workshop, focused on tools and information on inclusive coaching specific to 2SLGBTQ+ & Gender Identity and creating inclusive and safe spaces.

I hosted the ISPARC ACM workshop at my gym and it included three modules of training featuring traditional/holistic approaches to coaching, dealing with racism in sport, and Indigenous-centred health, lifestyle and nutrition information that can applied to create inclusive and safe spaces.

I attended the Pathways Gathering delivered by both I·SPARC and BC Regional Sport Alliance partners where I had the opportunity to engage in the Athlete Mental Wellness/Performance and Concussion Management breakout sessions.

The Indigenous Cultural Safety training included:

1. Pre-ZOOM gathering
2. 2-3 hour online curriculum
3. Special video by Elder Alex Nelson
4. 2-day in-person training that included the Kairos Blanket Exercise
5. Post-ZOOM gathering and reflection

I shared my transformative experience when I participated in the ISPARC Indigenous Cultural Safety Training in this blog post.

After each workshop I attended, I’ve taken what I learned and applied the lessons to my MHPCTL program assignments, coaching, and business leadership practice.

Objective #2: Networking and Meeting with Sport Leaders

The purpose of networking and meeting with sport leaders, sport coaches and sport organizations was to discuss gaps within their context and brainstorm solutions to address those gaps.

The two-day ISPARC Indigenous Cultural Safety Training gave me the opportunity to connect and meet with progressive PSO sport leaders, coaches, ViaSport board members, and staff from the BC Ministry of Tourism, Arts, Culture and Sport. I also had opportunities throughout this year to connect and meet with:

• Lara Mussell, Executive Director of Sport, ISPARC
• Kim Leming, Manager, Participant Pathways & Cultural Safety Training, ISPARC
• Dwayne Roberts, Project Manager, Indigenous Programs, Schools Physical Activity & Physical Literacy, Master Facilitator (MF) for ISPARC schools’ physical activity and physical literacy (SPA-PL) project
• Teagan Johnstone, Manager Physical Literacy and Community Action, Pacific Sport Fraser Valley
• Justin Hamade, junior high-performance baseball coach and former Baseball BC board member
• Ben Saxton, 2016 Olympian Beach Volleyball, high-performance coach, small business owner VolleyDome in Calgary
• Mischa Harris, Strength & Conditioning coach, volleyball biomechanics educator, small business owner Arm Swing Academy in Victoria
• Jonathan Thompson (JT), basketball skills coach, small business owner Nxt Generation Athletics in Surrey

Every individual on this list I connected with concurred with me on the problem I stated above and that there’s simply not enough time within their context to “do it right”. For example, sport coaches – who are also small business owners – feel pressured to get their athletes into as many high-profile tournaments in a season as possible as their parents are paying for it and demanding their kids play at a high level as much as possible. PHE educators feel pressure to keep their students entertained and resort to playing random games that have no progressions. Sport leaders feel pressured to get funds each year to keep their members satisfied with quality competitions and funding high-performance athletes.

My conversations provided me with evidence that the problem is real and the solution requires a different approach.

Objective #3: Shadowing and assisting with ISPARC School Physical Activity, Physical Literacy (SPAPL)

Over the last 13 years, I’ve taught may PHE classes at elementary, middle, and high school in my community as a guest educator. I would typically be brought it to teach no more than 4 classes (typically 2x/week for two weeks) where I emphasized teaching principles of movement and strength training rather than the typical sports model. I would always be shocked at how little the students knew about movement and the basics of strength training but by the end of the 4th class, their feedback provided me with evidence that focusing on movement and strength training principles was more inclusive and engaging to the students compared to teaching random physical activities and sports.

The one thing missing from my approach was that I didn’t place any emphasis on mind and spirit in my teaching. The purpose of this objective then was to shadow, assist, and observe MF Dwayne Roberts as he facilitates the SPAPL program at Edith McDermott Elementary School. I wanted to see how he introduces principles of movement, physical activity and how he incorporates mind, spirit, and Indigenous culture to those lessons.

The sessions I shadowed and assisted were 45-minutes in duration. The kids were grades 2-3 and grades 5-6 and we saw each set of grades once in the classroom, once in gym, and one last time outside on the field. MF Dwayne Roberts did a great job of saying “take your time” as he coached kids through patterns using an agility ladder. He also talked in the first lesson about how movement helps your mind become more focused. That was the extent of talking about the connection of mind and body when it comes to movement. He also introduced an Indigenous game in second and third sessions. Since each class was so short and because the scope of our visit to the school was more of an introduction, my sense was Dwayne may have felt pressured to entertain the kids with as much activities and movement as possible. It would be interesting to see how the pedagogy would be adjusted if Dwayne had more time with the kids and the teachers.

Teachers for each class were provided with SPAPL material to help them develop lesson plans for future classes however I’m not convinced the teachers have the necessary knowledge of movement and strength training principles and the necessary amount of time to ensure their students would actually learn anything and progress.

Objective #4: Examine and Apply Academic Literature

I already mentioned my KIN586 paper above where I examined the literature that provided evidence of the problem I highlighted. For another KIN586 assignment, I created a presentation entitled “KIN586 Innovation Practice, High Performance Coach Assignment: Training Interventions to Develop Cognitive Skills for Weightlifting Athletes to Create Conditions for Deliberate Practice.” where I presented my idea of implementing appropriate Decision Training and Self-Regulation interventions in order to develop my athlete’s cognitive skills of “problem solving” and “focus concentration”. The purpose here is to promote learning through an information-integration (i.e. holistic and implicit) approach and to create training conditions that resemble competition atmosphere and promote diligent practice and learning.

The literature review in my presentation provided evidence that a holistic teaching model would be more effective than the current model because:

• learning through an information-integration (i.e. holistic and implicit) structure can be more effective in preventing choking under pressure compared to rule-based (explicit) learning (Markman et al., 2006)
• The Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement (CEYE) defines engagement as the meaningful participation and sustained involvement of a person in an activity, which has a focus outside of her or himself, and that full engagement and learning consists of all of these aspects (head, heart, feet, spirit) (Pancer et al., 2002)
• Youth engagement experiences can be an important context for the exploration of spirituality (Scott, 2003).

The results of the 4-step implementation plan I conducted in this assignment was a clear indication to me that the interventions worked and made a positive impact in my athlete’s training. Many of my athletes saw application of these interventions that could be applied to other aspects of their lives as well. This information provided me with further evidence that a holistic teaching model can be more effective at developing long-term personal development as the lessons learned during training or practice are not exclusive to the sporting activity.

Reflections

The graduate certificate year of UBC’s three year MHPCTL program has given me the push I needed in my personal and career development. I entered the program to challenge myself to work on starting the process of fixing a major problem I’ve observed working over 15 years as a strength and conditioning coach, physical health educator, and small business owner in the health and fitness industry. I’ve worked closely with my professors this first year and I’ve done my best to ensure that as many assignments as I could work towards that process. After this graduate certificate year completes, I hope that I’m accepted into the Masters program so I can continue to work alongside my mentors, professors, and my new network of sport leaders to continue the work I’ve started. I’m confident by then end of the Masters program, I’ll be able to refine an inclusive and holistic teaching model and provide a structure to teach that model and its principles to coaches, PHE educators, and sport leaders. Looking forward to the challenge.