August 9th

Although I planned to teach soccer session two today, when we showed up with the 3 classes, none of them wanted to play soccer because they’ve been doing it for the past 3 weeks. We decided to change to volleyball and let them just play five minute games. I was surprised by how bad everyone was even though they were really excited to play. Most of them did not know the basic rules and couldn’t keep track of whose point it was and whose turn it was to serve. This class is hard to teach though because there are 3 different classes equaling about 60 students. It was a bit frustrating to see high schoolers not know basic rules and I am curious to see if it would be the same in the states.

Third session got me on edge today but my year 12 class was just really talkative and putting no effort into anything. We started lacrosse today, which is new to most of them, especially with all the Italians and Germans in the class. I started with basics of throwing, passing and scooping and I know some of this stuff can be boring, but they would never get through a proper game with out these skills. Some of the kids learned lacrosse last year and they were excited to play again but that makes them think that they are amazing players and can go right into a game. They get really confident pretty quickly. It took them a while to listen to my instructions and I almost felt like I was babysitting a bunch of 5^th graders. It was like pulling teeth trying to get them to do some passing and catching. By the time we played the game, they got more into it and put more effort into the game. It was an okay lesson considering these kids never want to do anything besides play the game for maybe 20 minutes but they make me really frustrated at times and I need to work on not showing that im annoyed and frustrated.

Fourth session went awesome and I had full control of the kids at all times which felt good. Even in the beginning, I sat down in a circle with them and we chatted for a few minutes about last speedball game and how well it went and what we were going to do today. They listened and respected me and were really excited to play again. We started with the 3 man weave which took a little while to explain but they got it after a couple of demonstrations. After they did really well with this, we got right into a game. It was really hot out today so most of them were getting tired pretty quickly because all of them were trying hard and running around. I really enjoy teaching this class and they really view me as an authority figure. I think this lesson went even better because Cameron stood more off to the side across the field instead of near the students. They knew he wasn’t teaching today and what I said goes. It made me more in charge and because the students knew it, they didn’t try to mess around.