Hug a Coach Day – Celebrating Our Mentors

After 3 decades wondering what I should do with my life, I found my calling. From waitress to lifeguard to pro basketball player to journalist to educator, I have taught everything from primary PE to freshman English to learning support.

Whether I am teaching a 6th grader to do a forward roll, a dyslexic child to spell, a 10th grader to understand Shakespeare, a senior to write a personal statement or a ball player to make a jump shop… I am a coach.

When I help kids makes sense of their lives, my life makes sense to me.

I help students discover their strengths, so they can one day navigate solo in our fast paced world filled with overwhelming demands and challenges.

However, when I was growing up, coaching was not an option. How could a girl have a coaching career if female athletes were non-existent and women weren’t allowed to participate in sports?

Today, coaching is in vogue. Coaching specialties run the gamut including life and personal coaches, to health/wellness/fitness/ coaches to business/leadership/executive coaches to organizing/ career/creativity coaches to parenting and retirement coaches. Even ADHD coaches are listed to identify tools to assist those with attention deficit hyperactivity and to develop positive coping strategies for every day life and specific tasks.

When I randomly googled transition coaches, Paula Ray’s website popped up. She explained the that transitional coaches base their principle on different disciplines, and states that her coaching philosophy is rooted in biomimicry. Huh? It’s no surprise that Paula Ray, who sounds like a New Age guru, is based in Del Mar, California.

Here is a list of some of the transition coach specialties.

Transition from one extreme socio-economic level to another
Transition from a stress-filled negative life into a life you love
Transition from one extreme socio-economic level to another in a short period of time
Transition out of a corporate career
Transition into your most enjoyable, rewarding and healthy retirement
Transition in marital status
Transition from an energy draining career to an exhilarating one
Transition through unexpected health care challenges

But hey, I am not knocking the career. No way. After my parents, coaches had the single greatest influence in my life.

Now everyone from CEOs to writers to retirees discuss their favorite buzzword, my coach. Once upon a time, coaching was learned almost by osmosis from playing a sport, now college degrees in coaching abound. Ohio University offers a Coaching Education master’s program to prepare coaches with the knowledge they need to become elite coaches.

Hopefully more female athletic coaches will join the ranks because they serve as excellent role models for girls. Like men have known for years, sports teaches life lessons and teams provide the best training grounds for the work place.

Women'sBasketballNorthernKentucky_Feb1979_L39O-2-79_ACCESS_copy

Legendary ISU Coach Jill Hutchison

Yep, everything I needed to know I learned in basketball.

Life is not fair. Get over it.
Leave your ego in the locker room
Pass to the open player
Rebound, rebound, rebound
Learn from each mistake
Hustle at all times
Lose graciously
Win humbly
Always credit teammates
Never give up

With all the emphasis on coaching nowadays, I propose we add a new celebration to the calendar.

In loving memory of my grandfather Ralph « Mac » McKinzie, a coach extraordinaire, I hereby declare December 7^th as the official Thank Your Mentor Day!

Coach Mac
October 1, 1894 December 7,1990

Have you hugged your coach today?

Best Teaching Tip – The Back Pocket Plan

After teaching for years, I know to be prepared for the unexpected, so I always carry a spiral notebook in my back pocket. On it, I have a list activities for those times when the lesson does not go as planned due to faulty technology, essay eating hobgoblins and the never fail, « I can’t present today my group member is sick. »

Kids today are so clever. They must toss a virtual coin on Facebook the night before a group oral presentations are due to decide which member of the team should be absent the next day.

Teachers become adept at thinking off the top of their head, seat of their pants and back of their eyeballs. Since my students weren’t ready, I resorted to the pack pocket plan. I led a discussion about how the weather echoes human emotions in the text we were studying. Then I opened the blinds and told them to stare out the window and write for 10 minutes about this typical dreary fall day. Write about whatever comes to mind regarding weather, how you feel when looking out the window today, how the rainy autumn affects your mood, how you dream of escaping this dreary classroom.

Educational studies show that students learn best when they see the teacher looking at a book during reading time or writing along with them during a writing assignment. I pulled out my pocket notebook and began scribbling.

At the end of 10 minutes, a few brave souls timidly read their pieces of work. Then I think as a ploy to save unwilling classmates, they insisted I read mine. So I began…

« This weather stinks. Rainy. Cloudy. Cold. Old man winter is coming round cloaking us in a death vice. I am sick of the foggy gloom that is November. I am tired of seeing the faded, grey view from my dark tinted glasses. I am weary from too much work and too little time. I want to crawl under my soft, lumpy duvet and hibernate until spring, but I can’t. My students are waiting with eager, smiling faces, fidgety and restless, full of life. So I put on a happy face and greet my class with a grin. They bring me enough light and laughter to endure the autumn blues. »

Bless their generous little hearts, when I finished reading, the class burst into applause. Right on time one ginger-headed boy, deadpanned, « You must have been writing about your other class. »

We burst out laughing just as the dismissal bell rang ending the school day.

And that is why I love teaching.

What is your best back pocket plan?

Best Teaching Tip – The Back Pocket Plan

Kids today are so clever. They must toss a virtual coin on Facebook the night before a group oral presentations are due to decide which member of the team should be absent the next day.

At the end of 10 minutes, a few brave souls timidly read their pieces of work. Then I think as a ploy to save unwilling classmates, they insisted I read mine. So I began…

Bless their generous little hearts, when I finished reading, the class burst into applause. Right on time one ginger-headed boy, deadpanned, « You must have been writing about your other class. »

We burst out laughing just as the dismissal bell rang ending the school day.

And that is why I love teaching.

What is your best back pocket plan?

Coach McKinzie, A College Ball Field, Teammates ‘til the End of Time

Coach Mac – 1950

Anyone affiliated with sport knows that team connections can last lifetimes; lessons learned on the field have an everlasting impact. I witnessed this with the teams I played for and coached. However few teams can compare to the extraordinary bond created by the 1950-51 back-to-back Illinois Intercollegiate Athletic Conference championship baseball team that my grandfather coached at Northern Illinois University.

At that time no one could imagine that seven decades later those same ball players would stay in contact, reuniting annually to play golf, swap stories over a meal and commemorate their time as Huskies playing baseball for Coach Mac. “The tradition has gone on for 40 some years,” Grant Cummings, an outfielder, said, “We have been getting together for so long no one can remember when we held our first of the first reunions.”

“We revered your grandpa,” Bill Eiserman, First Team All Interstate Athletic Conference catcher and captain, told me. “We won a lot of games, but he taught us that being a good person is more important than winning. He built character.”

“He taught a lot of lessons,” Bill continued. “But that was the greatest. I tried to impart that in all the teams that I coached. Everybody loves to win – not every team has the talent to win – but everyone can still take that valuable lesson away from the game.”

McKinzie, a seven time Hall of Fame Coach served as head basketball coach where he also won 3 state conferences in 8 years, before becoming head baseball coach. He also served as tennis, track and field coach, as well as an assistant football coach and athletic trainer at NIU from 1940-63. Though he officially retired from NIU in 1963, he continued coaching football into his nineties at his own alma mater, Eureka College.

Every year until my grandpa’s death at the age of 96, my dad, a dedicated son also part of that team, made sure Coach Mac made it to the annual baseball reunion.

NIU-baseball-team-1950-51

Once a year the guys rally past personal setbacks, the loss of loved ones, and limitations due to declining health, to gather in celebration of not so much their ol’ double plays and home runs, but to honor the memory of the coach who shaped their lives and the camaraderie that developed under his leadership.

“Every spring we drove down to New Orleans for a tournament, stopping to play games along the way,” Cummings told me, a trip that I found remarkable for that time period.

“I wasn’t a drinker,” my dad said, “so I ordered a coke on our night out on the town. The guys still razz me; my coke cost more than those fancy cocktails everybody else was drinking.”

Typically, college stadiums are named for big-time alumni donors. My grandpa, son of a tenet farmer, lived modestly even donating his coaching salary back to Eureka College in his later years. He never made a fortune coaching, but he sure made friends.

In the late 80s, fueled by Bill Eiserman, Jack Brumm, Bud Nangle, former SID at NIU, and including the support of my grandpa’s Eureka College football player, President Ronald Reagan, the 1950-51 NIU team instigated naming the NIU baseball diamond, Ralph McKinzie Field. Mike Korcek, who can still recount the win-loss record of every team during his tenure as NIU’s sports information director, and Cary Groth, one of the first female large college athletic directors were also instrumental in the process.

On May 8, 1993, at the dedication ceremonies, my dad threw the game-opening pitch. “Poor Bill scooped my pitch out of the dirt,” my dad said and chuckled. “Bill kept me from looking bad, my pitch never made it cross the plate. I was an outfielder, not a pitcher.”

NIU Hall of Fame induction 10.10.2007
Front-Kranz, Moreno, Brumm, Neukirch, Giudici, Meath, Leon, Eiserman
Back-Davis, McKinzie, Wasco, Cummings, Stap, Bedrosian

My grandpa won countless honors; the NIU baseball field and Eureka College football field bear his name. But accolades aside, what made my Coach Mac proudest, was seeing what kind of men his players became.

Each member of the 1950-51 NIU team became successful in his own field, as high school and college teachers, coaches and athletic directors and exemplary civic leaders in business and education.

My grandpa also played a key role in my life. I miss him to this day, so I find comfort knowing his name lives on in the hearts of his former athletes.

These ol’ ball players have done him proud in turn by serving their family, community and country. The field may bear Ralph McKinzie’s name, but it carries the spirit of the 1950-51 ball team.

Athletes that step up to the plate at NIU today have no idea who Coach Mac was, still I hope that my grandpa’s moral standards seep into their souls through the diamond dust on that field of dreams.

World’s Largest, Oldest International School Provides a Global Education

courtesy of Ecolint

Too tall, too smart, too athletic as a girl I felt too big to squeeze into the gender constraints of the 60s until Title IX (1972) opened doors providing equal opportunity in education and sport in America’s schools. In pursuit of a dream once denied in my homeland, I moved abroad three decades ago. After a globetrotting athletic career, I found a home at the world’s oldest and largest international school at the Ecole Internationale de Genève (Ecolint), a bilingual school with instruction in French and English.

Founded in 1924, the school grew from its humble beginnings of 8 students, 3 teachers and a rabbit to 3 large campuses: La Grand Boissière and Campus des Nations (2005) in Geneva, and La Châtaigneraie (1970) in the Canton Vaud. Our 4,380 students represent a world record of 135 different nationalities speaking 84 different mother tongues.

“In 1920-1921, the League of Nations and the International Labour Office (ILO) established their headquarters in Geneva with staff drawn from many countries. This created the need to cater for students with a diversity of cultures preparing them for university education in their home countries.”

Our tenets are imbedded with Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s (1712-1778) theories of education.

Arthur Sweetser, an American war correspondent during WWI, who became the unofficial ambassador to the League of Nations (1919-39), advocated for international education in conjunction with Adolphe Ferriere and Elisabeth Rotten. Dr. Ludwig Rajchman (Poland), William Rappard, Rector of the University of Geneva, and Sir Arthur Salter, a senior official of the League of Nations were also involved in the creation of the school.

Another American, Robert Leach (1916-2004) a social studies teacher, became the father of the International Baccalaureate designed to help students develop their intellectual, personal, emotional, and social abilities. The acclaimed diploma, once considered a pie-in-the-sky idea, is now recognized worldwide. One million students are enrolled in its programs and over a 100,000 students sit the exams. Yet, few schools can match our school’s 96% graduation rate.

The Ecolint code we uphold that speaks loudest to me is Article 4 point 4 of our charter.

courtesy of Ecolint

“The activity of school in all fields and especially in the field of pedagogy shall be based on the principles of equality and solidarity among all peoples and of the equal value of all human beings without any distinction of nationality, race, sex, language or religion.”

As Vicky Tuck, our General Director, states on our website, “We seek to give all our students the opportunity to experience a unique international education and to acquire the personal attributes, outlook and knowledge that will equip them to play an active part in the construction of tomorrow’s world.”

Many of our former students went onto make a global impact in the arts, sciences and diplomacy such as Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) former Prime Minister of India. Michael Douglas, an Oscar-winning and Emmy Award-nominated American actor and producer, Elizabeth Frank, Pulitzer Prize winning author: Norman Schwarzkopf commander in chief of US and coalition troops, Operation Desert Storm, and Joakim Noah – NCAA division 1 basketball MVP of the final four 2006 and NBA star for the Chicago Bulls for the past 4 seasons, all have made an impact in their fields. Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations and Macalester College alumni, served on the Ecolint board from 1981-83.

Each day as I walk into a classroom filled with students reflecting faces of the world, I am humbled by the magnitude of our mission. Though I am the teacher, I learn just as much from by my global-minded students, who speak multiple languages, carry several passports and have lived on different continents before entering secondary school.

Europe, Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas meet on the campus' court

Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia and the Americas meet on the campus’ court

As a Norwegian-American married to a Frenchman, raising our kids with an international education in the bucolic countryside of a neutral country was idyllic. Like so many of our alumni, my own children, one a pediatrician advocating for healthcare for underprivileged children in the St.Paul-Minneapolis area and the other an educator in the making, pay it forward in their own lives. Unlike students who attend school in homogenous communities, international education taught tolerance by exposing them to pupils of other cultural beliefs and traditions, who then became friends. Today, Nathalie understands her Somali refugee patients, and not only because she speaks French. Nic is especially sensitive to the needs of his African American, Hmong and Latino students.

Ecolint sets high standards for its staff and students in an attempt to uphold such lofty ideals in a tenuous time of world unrest and conflicting ideologies. We do our best to meet the challenge of contributing to a better world, one child at a time.

Summer Memories Last A Lifetime

It is that bittersweet time of year when school starts and we must bid a fond farewell to summer. 2013 will be marked as one of the finest even though I am exhausted from the whirlwind of festivities.

Book tour in my hometown where I saw old neighbors, teachers, friends who touched my life at each stage of my childhood.

The wedding of my best friend’s daughter, a cosmopolitan girl that I taught, coached and mentored, the beautiful, marathon running, Community Wellness Director who married a charming dairy farmer in Winona Minnesota.

Special guest of the McKinzie family in Shaker Heights – my brother provided fascinating tours of Cleveland as he chauffeured me to my Senior National Games speaking engagements.

Connecting with basketball playing and promoting aficionados across the continents – NSWBA, NOVA United, NSAA – and the chance to be a part of the Senior National Games even though I am no longer physically able to compete.

The craziness of running a B & B on Summit Lake that caters to special diets, erratic schedules and the idiosyncrasies of 5 families, 3 generations and their various friends.

Endless hours swapping stories around a campfire, floating on the raft, sharing meals, laughing at Kizzie’s antics, reconnecting with loved ones and creating lifelong memories.

Swimming to the island with my 22 year-old-son and his college mates. Woo hoo, I can still keep up with the kids!

Commemorating passages, the loss of a dear family friend, a carpenter extraordinaire, who bought my grandparents ol’ boys camp preserving its history with every log.

Enduring ze Frenchman’s middle age crisis – the purchase of a new (used) boat, so he can ski with the kids. You go, G-Man.

Sixtieth wedding celebration of Jim and Lenore, a remarkable couple who I am blessed to have as parents.

The 50^th anniversary of Little Camp Ney-A-Ti, our family cabin, a magical playground in the Northwoods where we put aside our problems to share the beauty of nature, the bond of family and the blessing of friendships.

As I look back on an extraordinary summer, I want to shout out my gratitude to family, friends, and folks who went out of their way to make my stay in the States so special.

The best part about living between worlds is that even though my heart is filled with sadness as I say farewell to folks back home, I can hear the mountains calling, see my students smiling, and feel my international community’s warm embrace. Welcome back to Switzerland, Missy Ex-Pat.