The Meaningful Podcast Experience (MPE)

School Sport for All - Opportunities for Meaningful Experiences

• Ty and Doug • Season 1

Share episode

Send us a text

This episode features Lauren Sulz and Jonathan Mauro talking about school sport - specifically, a framework called School Sport for All. We discuss the intersections between it and Meaningful PE, how school sport can be an opportunity for meaningfulness and much more.

Dr. Lauren Sulz is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta with a focus on healthy school communities. Lauren's research includes physical and health literacy, school sport and school-based physical activities, whole-child education, comprehensive school health, and health and physical education pedagogy.  You can learn more about Lauren on her faculty page or follow her on X: @Lauren_Sulz.

Jonathan Mauro is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. He currently is the Indigenous Education Services Coordinator for Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools. Jonathan has taught high school and middle school physical education and outdoor education and coaches numerous sport teams. He is currently researching the implementation of the SS4A framework. Jonathan can be found on X: @jnlmauro. 

Resources mentioned in the episode include:

Thanks to Isaiah Gleddie for the guitar pieces, SSHRC for some funding and our guests for sharing!

Douglas Gleddie:

Ty. Hello, folks. You are listening to the meaningful podcast. Experience with myself, Doug Gleddie and

Ty Riddick:

I'm Ty Riddick. The purpose of this podcast is to engage in conversations with those enacting meaningful physical education, both in terms of research as well as in their teaching practice and everything that falls in between.

Douglas Gleddie:

All right, welcome to the meaningful podcast experience. Ty and I are very happy to be sitting here virtually with Dr Lauren Sulz and the future Dr Jonathan Mauro and we are going to be talking today about school sport, meaningfulness and all sorts of other things. So let's just get started. Lauren, could you just introduce yourself, where you are, what you do, why you do what you do?

Lauren Sulz:

First of all, thanks for for having us. We love talking about school sport and the connection between school sport and meaningful physical education should be a great conversation. I am an associate professor in the Faculty of Education here at the University of Alberta, and I'm currently the Associate Dean of integrated strategic initiatives. My research area is focused on comprehensive school health and whole school environments to promote well being among children and youth, but it's also about creating a whole school community where its foundation and mission is focused on health, so that includes students, teachers and the greater school community.

Douglas Gleddie:

Okay, awesome, and we will dive into all of those things in a little bit here. John, over to you same deal?

Jon Mauro:

Yeah, I'll second. Thank you, Doug and Ty for having us on here today. Currently, I work with Red Deer regional schools. My current role doesn't really fall in here, but I'm our Indigenous Education Services Coordinator. But prior to that, I spent over 15 years teaching high school and middle school, phys ed, outdoor ed, and coaching all wide gamut of sports. Within that, I was also a sessional instructor, instructor at Reddick Polytechnic in the education program, teaching pre service teachers from elementary to high school and the new Pew curriculum. And as well, I'm a PhD candidate at the U of A working under Dr Doug Leddy and Dr Laura hen Sauls. Lastly, with that, husband and I have three young kids, and I think that's important too, as we go down this conversation, because my children play a vital role in how and why I'm here doing what we're doing.

Douglas Gleddie:

Mm, hmm, yeah, thanks, John. And you are a lucky, lucky man to be working with such wonderful supervisors. It's amazing.

Jon Mauro:

I agree all my blessings every day.

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, you should. And I really like how you brought in your family as well. Because I think for all of us, and you know, Ty is a recent a recent joiner to the to the family person category, but it is interesting, like for all of us, we've been teachers, we've been coaches, we are teachers, we are coaches, and we're all parents. So multiple perspectives in there, which I look forward to diving into. So obviously, we're going to talk about school sport today. That's kind of the plan. So what I'd like to do is for each of you again, to just sort of tell us a little bit about what you've done and are doing now, maybe where this came from, and Lauren, if we can start with you, because you started this research back when you were still doing your masters, yes, in Saskatchewan. So just tell us a little bit about the kind of genealogy of this work.

Lauren Sulz:

Sure, and I think this, this starting point, is really important to to share. And I know most of you on here, have heard this story, but I do think it is, you know, the foundation of where this work started, and an important short story to share, because many of us as as parents, but also as coaches and researchers. Can, you know, empathize with this story. So my work did start at the University of Saskatchewan with some wonderful colleagues there, we were not focused on researching sport or school sport, but rather physical activity opportunities for youth and how we, you know, increase engagement in all sorts of physical activities. But our interest in school sport started when one of my colleagues, son was cut from a school sports team in high school, and he was cut from the basketball team in grade 12 after making it in grade 11. So it was one of those really hard cuts that we see sometimes happen, you know, within the community, but also in particular, with. In within school sport. So she observed the change in his holistic well being after being cut from this school sports team. So in the sense of his social circle changing, his friends, you know, remained on the basketball team and he did not, and his, you know, emotional well being he was obviously very upset, and, you know, didn't receive those supports needed when something so emotionally impactful happens to you at that age, and then he wasn't really interested in playing or continuing in basketball, because, you know, his coach had told him that he was he wasn't good enough. So we were interested in this population of students who were cut from a school sports team, and that's where our research started. Was looking at the population of of students cut from from sports team. So we started asking students who were cut from sports teams to talk to us, which was a really hard population to get because nobody wants to talk about that experience. But that's where it started, and we, you know, are still on our mission of improving school sport in the sense of better supporting our youth in that in that team selection process, but also enhancing and increasing the participation and accessibility of school sport.

Douglas Gleddie:

And then there was the work too, with with teacher coaches and athletic directors to look at the purpose and all the the barriers, challenges, opportunities and stuff too. And I would, I would hazard a guess, and I can do that easily, because I'm involved in this work as well. But, you know, going through that data, it was like, Well, how do we how do we help shift? Right?

Lauren Sulz:

Absolutely, and and it just snowballed. So once we talked to the students, we realized we needed to talk to the teacher coaches. And then we've actually spent a lot of time talking to parents as well. So in that cutting study, we also talked about the impact on the family and what the parents perspective of the purpose of school sport. And I'm sure we'll get into into what that that purpose looks like, and how important it is to understand your purpose and your philosophy when, when running a school sport program. But that's where our research just evolved, talking to different community members and the needs of both students, but But Teacher coaches as well, and without our teacher coaches, we can't have school sport.

Douglas Gleddie:

And then kind of the I won't say the culminating, because it's still progressive, like you say, and it's like a snowball, but the article in learning landscapes that actually shares the evidence based framework of school sport for all. And maybe we'll touch on that in a moment, what the framework actually looks like. And of course, we'll, we'll share the the document, and it is open access, so we can share that direct link in the show notes. But the reason for that was kind of, kind of to go back to all the literature and take a look at, okay, what, what is it? What is successful actually mean? And so maybe, John, maybe this is where you come in a little bit. How does your dissertation work kind of fit into all this? I mean, we were working with you before that, but so how do you, how do you and your research fit here

Jon Mauro:

to kind of go off of Lauren and where how she started. It's, it's as well, a little important to see where I started to lock down this way with the research, if that's all right, at the beginning of the development of the school support for all framework, I was currently, at the time, working in a middle school, and I was coaching grade six boys basketball, and what really stood out was we had our the year before we had our grade five orientation day, and all the grade fives were going to be grade six next year, came into the school, and you could just every single person was going up there, like, yes, you want to come to our school, you want to try out, you want to be part of the sports team. It's going to be so good for you. You all, yeah, you just want to be a wolf. It's going to be so good for you. And then we got to the tryouts for grade six basketball. There was two teams, so about 30 boys would go to me making the team. Yet we had almost 70 plus boys try out for these, for these two teams. So what ended up happening upon reflection, making the teams? We're like, we're telling all these students how important it is and why they should be part of school sport. And then all of a sudden, we are telling over half of them that you're not good enough, you don't get to be part of it anymore. Afterward, building it up to everyone for so long. And then myself and the my co coach were just looking back and we realized we looked at the students that we chose for the sports teams, for the basketball team, and majority of them that were made the team won were came from a school, an elementary school, that had a very good elementary physical education program. Right off the bat. Right? So they're already coming in with some of those skills. And then the other percentage of the students that made the team, majority of them came from a higher socio economic background, where they were already playing club sport. They're playing club basketball, right? So we're giving these kids the opera, the ones who already playing. We're getting now more opportunity playing. So then we saw like all these students were making the team, were already the ones who had the opportunity to play, and we're thinking about all these other kids. And then I did some reflecting on all the benefits and opportunity I received from playing in school sport, and thinking, how do these kids not have the opportunity anymore? And then, selfishly, I'm looking at my own kids. I wanted my own kids to have the same opportunities, to receive the same benefits of participation through sport. So that's so then started going down the rabbit hole of looking at the school sport for all framework and implementing it. And then we took it to another school when we research started, and then working alongside Doug, what we ended up doing was we did a professional development day for the teachers, coaches, athletic directors and men at the school, and did a bit of a swat analysis, and we kind of came up with Three, three different goals for the school to implement to enhance their school sport experience. And the, I guess, the three opportunities were that creating a sports development program looking at how to get, I guess, students who weren't already participating in school sport participating in it, and particularly this one was our foundation and blended students, which is students with a wide range of abilities, from intellectual to physical abilities, and then looking at how to use school sport as a way to bring the school and greater community together.

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, thanks, John. And I, you know, one of the phrases that came up for us as we kind of developed this work was the idea of school and public education and everyone having access. And so, you know, if school is for all, why not school sport? And I'll just just interject briefly here before I turn it over to Ty, but one of the things we get from people all the time is like, well, you just don't care about competition. You don't care about high level sport or, quote, unquote athletes or that. And that's just not true. That's why we settled on the school sport for all, because there's opportunities there. But the fact remains that some of those kids have those opportunities everywhere other kids don't. So that's just, well, I think it's important to have that background right off the bat,

Jon Mauro:

yeah, just jumping in on that. Doug is there needs to be a place there, hopefully can and should be a place for all those students, the ones who want the competitive aspect to grow in that within our schools, but the ones who just want to participate in sport. So again, when people think, yeah, I agree with you, Doug, a lot of times, when we first introduced this idea of school sport for all into my first school I was working at, we held a parent meeting because we want to get parents on our side when we're making changes in school. Those are the ones. That's how you get changes made in school through the parents. And the feedback that came back was quite a blowback, saying, Well, my kids an elite volleyball player in grade six, right? And so trying to meet all those needs is difficult, but it's not impossible, and there's ways that we can find ways to support all students.

Ty Riddick:

Made such a nice segue to a question I did want to ask, but I'm gonna have to back up and talk a little bit about the SS for a model. It's something that's new to me. I read mostly about it and and getting ready for this podcast, and I'm listening to what you're saying about the others, kids get cut and and things like that. But if I was sitting there as a skeptic saying, You know what? Like, that's just the that's just the nature of school sport, kids get cut. Life's hard. You apply for the job. You don't always get it. Why? There's other ways to play. There's other places to play sport. You go to your club, you can go to the community, you can do it with your family. Why does Why is the school such an essential site for this sport, for all approach. So I'm just wondering if you could tell me a little bit about the why behind the SS four a model, and a little bit of what exactly it is for someone like myself who may not be as familiar with it.

Lauren Sulz:

Yeah, thanks Ty for the question that that is a common question we get asked, and it does get me fired up. So you're going to get a little bit. I'll give you the next on purpose. Um, so, yeah, the purpose of of school sport for all is to increase opportunity and improve the experiences of students within school sport, but also teachers within school sport. And it's to enhance, you know, accessibility, but diverse accessibility, as we. Just, we just talked about school sport must be distinct from club sport, or we're just serving the same the same students, and we want to expand the number of students that are participating, not expand the opportunities from a narrow amount of students. So our purpose is really about accessibility, inclusivity and development, and we do put development first ahead of competition, which is important. And I think all children and youth sports should put development ahead of competition, whether you're triple A or C division, that that should be our focus, because their children and youth, and they're still still learning now to address your your comment on, you know why school sport and and the life lesson of being cut, I would completely agree we need to teach our future generations how to accept rejection and how to accept not being good enough for something, how To how to lose and win with grace. We can either do that through cutting them once and having them experience that, or we can do that with by having them on the team and having them experience those life lessons over and over again through sport. So sport teaches us all sorts of life skills, and there's a ton of research to back up what those life skills that are taught through sport. So I am an advocate for teaching these young people those lessons multiple times instead of just once being cut. So we have to have them on the team to do so. And as far as why the why the school, as Doug alluded to earlier, it's an educational institution. We are there to teach students and to develop students for their future. And I think school sport falls under that umbrella. And if we take a look at a comprehens school health approach, school sport also falls in that framework. So if we take the education and the comprehens school health approach, which has both health and education, school sport can overlap that and has alignment between both. So our focus with school sport for all is, is also focused on student well being, holistic well being, as well as the educational impact that school sport can provide them. You said

Ty Riddick:

we were I was going to get the fiery version. I was, like, instantly stressed that I don't know how to bleep out swear words on grad span. So how are we going to edit this? So thank you for not you know, I thought I don't have to do that. John, anything to add on those points?

Jon Mauro:

Yeah, I, I, Lauren did a great job with that, but I think a couple of points to highlight is just what she was finishing off there with. Is, how can we use school sport to increase and support those students education, right? If that can be, if school sport can be a mechanism to keep kids in school right, to support their academics, that's what we want to look at it as well. I'm thinking back and it's been mentioned, we want to create these experiences for the kids and the teachers and the coaches, but through the research, one of the experiences that we had a great impact on is the greater family dynamic when we were when I was conducting the research at our the our school, we, we created a school sport environment for students who never had an opportunity to participate in school sport, and those were the students in our foundations and blended programs that have the wide range of ability and disabilities and just a story that comes to Mind we had the opportunity to provide them with to be partaking the Jays care baseball program, right as a form of school of sport within it. And one of the roles that that played was that they did an opening ceremony, and they all these students were part of the Blue Jays care program, were able to walk in front of the school for a pep rally that was just for them. And the look on those kids faces, the whole gym was going crazy, the applause, they had a slide show. But afterwards, after that pep rally was all done, I'm just walking around watching, observing, and in the I guess the hallway gathering right outside the gym, the parents and grandparents were ecstatic. They were in tears, because this is the first time that they ever saw their child being part of a school, of the school community, because so often they're siloed in their own little areas of school, but for them to be highlighted and promoted, it it really changed the perspective and the experience of the parents now with their kids in their school. That's so funny.

Ty Riddick:

It's gonna be a weird connection, because we filmed a podcast earlier this morning, but that one won't be released, released for a month, probably after this one. And that was one of the things that came came through was like, how do you celebrate what it like? Celebrate the engagement with sport or physical activity. How do you validate and support these kids and that, that example you just shared is to the T how you do that? The follow up that we didn't maybe have in the first conversation is from your story. We can, we can see just how powerful that is, not just for the kid, but everyone in the in the community. The the segue that you made earlier was your SWOT analysis, which the T is threats. And I think we maybe agree that a lot of aspects of school sport, certainly in Alberta, are under threat as especially in our public school systems. Doug, I'll send this one to you, and Lauren and all of you as well. But you wrote a paper in 2020 about improving school sport, and what I'm hearing you saying is that we want to increase the expand the number of students who are involved in sport, so that they can receive all of these, the holistic benefits of participation. And my misconception of that initially is that, okay, what you're referring to is no cut policies. Everyone gets to be on the team. And so if I'm a volleyball coach and I'm accustomed to taking 12 students on a team, because that's just standard. Now I'm going to try and maybe take 1819, 20, but still me as as the coach, and I kind of thought that's what what we were talking about, and then reading the SS for a s for a paper, it's not exactly what you mean. We want kids to have access to quality coaching, quality playing time too, in order to receive those benefits. The challenge with that is, for me, it's the coaching bit. And I asked you in our pre recording, was this data to come pre COVID? Because I think post COVID Things have got even more challenging. And I spoken to my wife about this. She's a principal at a school heavily, and she was an athletic director for a period of time, and she is shocked that when we were growing up, sports was your way into school as a teacher. It's like, yeah, you might be the best math teacher in the world, but what else can you do for me after school? But ever since COVID, it seems that there's been a more of an emphasis on teacher wellness and not that coaching or involved in co curricular activities should be seen as anti wellness. But there's this prevailing attitude of like, I'm stressed with my job. I'm being asked to do more. I have no preps. How can I be asked to volunteer to coach? So I and what I'm saying, I think, is that I believe in the philosophy of the SS for a I want as many kids as possible engage with sport, with quality coaching. But I'm struggling with the barrier of, how do you get people to invest in that? How do we get people in our school communities to want to care about coaching?

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, and maybe I'll be really quick on this. I would encourage people to go to the show notes and link to the school support for all paper out of learning landscapes, again, I mentioned it's open access, but there's a diagram there, and I won't dive into all of it, but to your first point. Ty, one of the key things, what we would call one of the essential conditions. So we have essential elements, which are three quality, as you mentioned, development, so developmentally appropriate, but also helping people develop on multiple levels, not just competence in a sport and then inclusion, but we also have essential conditions, and the first one of those is contextual autonomy. So we're not saying this is a one size fits all for every single school. Thou shalt do exactly this. What fits in your school. What fits with your population? Maybe it's keeping your quote, unquote, travel teams or or extracurricular, sorry, what's the term? Not extracurricular, extramural teams. Maybe it's keeping them and you add a whole intramural program that feeds in and builds and does together, but there's no one answer. So I think that's that's kind of the first part of that. With the rest of that framework, we also start with evidence based so we've looked at what works with kids, what works in schools and sports, with coaches so I and then the last piece I'll say is, as I mentioned at the beginning, is that this is all intended to be looked at through a comprehensive school health or a Healthy Schools lens. So this is not an overnight solution. This is taking time to see. And that's where your comment about getting coaches that resonates with me. I mean, I had to do that in the past. My wife is teaching right now. It's gotten harder and harder to get teacher coaches because of time and stress and everything else. But I think if we embed it to just be the way we do business, that school sport is good for schools, good for kids, good for teachers, then we can begin to address how to do it.

Lauren Sulz:

Yeah, and I think you know, alongside people telling me that cutting kids from a sports team is the best way to provide life lessons, adding something to teachers plates, plates also, you know, is a touching point for me. So by no means are we adding more or want more of teachers. We. Want them to reframe what they're doing to better support themselves at and the students. So also in our conditions within the in the school sport for all framework is supportive systems. So how can we support our teachers to expand the participation and development of students on school sports teams. So So supporting teachers is definitely part of our work, and we've conducted a study on teacher well being. It's not published yet, but looking at their wellness during the season and their wellness outside of the season, and I can tell you their teachers well being outside of the their coaching season is much better than inside their coaching season. So we need to do something about that, and we need to address address that, and we as researchers need to find out more about how we can better support teachers. But by no means does increasing student participation have to equate to putting more on teachers already overflowing plates. So we have some ideas on, you know, how to do that and how to support teachers, but you're right. Like, I was hired as a teacher because I could coach basketball. That's why I was hired. You know, physical education was second. Coaching the senior girls basketball team was first. So there's also lots of pressures on teachers to do well, which also impacts that their, their well being. So I think we also need to focus on that question that when we do work with the school on, you know, reimagining their school sports program, to talk to them about, what is the purpose of the program, what is your philosophy, and, you know, what, what is driving that program? And if it's, if it's, you know, winning and getting to provincials. You know, we can work through that in order to have, perhaps a team that does that, and then another team that's more inclusive, that doesn't but allowing teachers to to maintain, maintain their wellness. So an example that maybe John can share with is having students help coach the teams which, frees up some teachers and and develops mentorship with students. We've seen, you know, teachers teach or coach at different hours than evenings. So we all have families. We're asking teachers to come back at 8pm to coach. How can we how can we better, you know, provide those times for practices. So we've had schools use the elementary gym that's that's open, that's free after school because we have facility issues, we can bring in it in a community coach with a teacher sponsor to mentor that teacher to future coach, or perhaps, you know, remain that that teacher, teacher supervisor. But So there's ways to do it without, you know, putting stress on teacher well being. But with that said, and included within the supportive systems is school board and administration, and they need to start to view school sport as an integral part of somebody's education and not an outside volunteer role. Because I know we know this, but perhaps listeners don't know that teacher coaches do not get paid extra for coaching. It is completely voluntary. They can either go home at four or they can stay more hours and coach. So it's completely voluntary. So I don't, don't necessarily blame teachers to say no to coaching because it impacts their well being and their and their load in the classroom is getting, getting more complex,

Jon Mauro:

and just jumping on both. Thanks, Lauren, that was the really great summary. And I'll jump in and talk a bit more about some of the examples that I've that we have seen working in the school specific setting. But I wanted to touch base on what Ty mentioned about just not cutting any kids, right? And having as many kids play as all the kids play. I've seen that firsthand, where at the very beginning of these stages we were, I was working with some other colleagues, and the one, one colleague, just took their basketball team and kept a bench of 30 kids. So what ended up happening was each kid, I think, in the basketball game, got three or four, two minute shifts. And we're constantly talking about experiences here. Well, all that created for those students, there was a miseducated experience where they did not want to be there anymore because they weren't playing right? So we have to be very careful about creating those education educative experiences for the students. We did find, again, going back what Doug said about contextual autonomy, we have to take a look at each school individually and see what works and what doesn't. Was the school that we did research on alongside with they ended up using grade eight and nine students as mentor coaches and bringing them involved. One of the things is important, though, is just bringing students in there and saying that you're going to be a junior coach or help coach, and they've had no training or or coach. Or experiences or guidance, all that's doing is again, possibly creating miseducated experience for those coaches, for the junior coaches, and for the players. So the one school that we're at, they had a leadership class as well, and they were able to use that leadership class as a way to develop and get some coaching, I guess, professional developments. I'm teaching on on how to do it when they're there. And so the previous school, they they use their senior team as mentor coaches. And the the, I guess, the sports development team that they would run their practices at lunchtime, and then they were able to, you to have the older students come in and be Junior coaches. We they still had the teacher coach to oversee and lead and guide everyone. But then all of a sudden we had a higher number of students participating as players. And so you need that ratio of coach to student. Well, they brought the the senior players in to be the coaches to help out with that ratio, but still with that guidance, and created a very positive experience for both. And they saw the interesting piece, but they actually saw the benefits outside of the of their practice and their game times. They saw it within the hallways, because now all of a sudden, these grade nine students had a connection with these grade six students. They were their buddy. They were now their friend. They're like, hey coach all the time. It made a stronger school community. It gave the older players really great life skills to move on afterwards. And then for the younger students, it gave them an opportunity still to participate and to play.

Ty Riddick:

It's like a very authentic sense of belonging. And what you've just described, not like an artificial like that, is kids walking in the hall, kids across grade levels, connecting with each other, like that. That's, that's a great, just great example,

Jon Mauro:

well, and I, and then the other piece with that you mentioned authentic, is another thing is we've seen is that if it's just an intramural program, versus, like, creating an authentic sport experience, where you still have those high standards of you have to these are practices you have to attend, right? You have to act appropriately at the practices. It's just not coming in and and intramurals are just playing the whole time, right? So trying to also create that authentic sport experience of through practices, through game plays. And which was, which was huge. The other key piece was we found that we end up getting some coaches who wanted to coach but couldn't previously anymore because of family life situations. Young kids running around after school don't have the time by creating opportunities within the school day, this time was that during the lunch hour, it was we opened up opportunities for these teacher coaches to give back in ways that they wanted to, in, in timing, in a way that they now can where they previously lost that opportunity, and they were excited and happy to be giving back to the students as well in sport. Sorry,

Lauren Sulz:

I was just going to add to to some of what John said, because I think it's important for the listeners to know that the school sport for all has, you know, John indicated about, you know, high quality and accountability for for being on the sports teams, it we're not watering down school sport and that's that's not what what we want to we want to do. So if you know you're a listener, and you're trying to think of ways in which you can, you know, increase participation on your school sports team, you might be able to only do that in a in a certain capacity. So we worked with a school in Edmonton here who was able to make no cuts on a certain sports team. So they were able to provide two sports because that was the capacity they had amongst their teacher coaches and the number of student participants that tried out, whereas another sport, they ended up having to make cuts because they had to maintain that quality and they only had one teacher coach. So it's just about looking at your context and seeing where can I make a difference here, and we have worked with with low income communities, and school sport is very impactful for for those students, because cost is a big barrier for community and club sport, and it keeps Those families engaged within the community. We've also worked with new Canadians who, you know, we asked earlier about, you know, why schools? Well, new Canadians in our in our research, have have expressed that the school is their community hub, and beyond that school, they're not sure where to go. So if you're in any of those contexts, and we, we think about. Enhancing or increasing participation. Let's look at who you know, who's not in the gym, and if we can enhance participation for some of those populations that need extra, extra support.

Ty Riddick:

We had our episode with Andy vastly released this morning, so I'm always, I'm just walking through the day thinking about what's possible, because Andy always says, Well, what's possible. So when I hear you speaking about school sport, it's a lot about looking at your own context and trying to think outside the box of like, well, what are the possibilities? And if we get stuck in this frame, that school sport needs to look the same way it looked when I was a student athlete. The practices are after school. JV teams have four tournaments on the weekend. Senior varsity, you have a tournament every weekend, and that's just weekend, and that's just how it is. Well, then maybe there's not a lot a lot of flexibility when you start reimagining some of those structures. There is actually probably a lot more possibility, not saying that's easy work, to reimagine a system that has been pretty consistent. The way that I think school sport operates now is the same as it was, you know, 20 years ago, when I was I was in school, and I imagine that's true for you as well. So it's not saying it's easy to reimagine those structures, but if we can just start to take a step back and look at our context, think about the possibilities, help people connect with the value. Because I think a lot of the reasons why maybe some teachers don't coach is because their perception of school sport is from from their youth as well, where it was exclusive, where it was only for the elite athletes. So why am I going to coach or volunteer to coach in something that what maybe wasn't that inclusive of me when I was younger? So if we can start to reframe that and say that's not what school that's not what this version of school sport is, maybe we can start to pull more people into to wanting to be involved in in this culture, in the so thank you for sharing those examples

Jon Mauro:

from from just completing the research at the one school was working with. The highlight from the principal, the administration at the there was like two things, just start and just start something small. It doesn't have to be redoing your whole school sports system at your school right off the hop. But how can you do one small change to begin with that might have an impact for some students who never had that opportunity? Yeah, and

Douglas Gleddie:

I think that idea of, and everyone has said it so far, but just start where you're at and Ty your phrase reimagining. That's what we started with. This whole process was just, how do we reimagine? It doesn't mean we throw everything out, like it's not a baby with the bathwater kind of thing, but it's, you know, what can you do? Maybe differently and and to speak to those different people that might coach, like, when my school division implemented curling as a school sport, they did it totally different. They bust kids from all the different schools to the curling rink. They had the pro curlers, the pros, whoever was at the club, actually teach the curling the teacher sponsors were welcome to learn right along. So we had a math teacher who had never coached anything, and he went along and he said, You know, I've taught now for 30 years. This is my best year of teaching because I got, because I got the opportunity to coach curling, and really he was just hanging out with kids. So that's looking at it differently, right? And I think we have those opportunities. It's just opening up our eyes to see what's there and then make sure, make sure, make sure that it fits in our context,

Lauren Sulz:

yeah. And I think our work Doug, you know, and our work with school sport, presenting to different groups of people, have opened our eyes to different ways school sport can be, can be framed. So I'm not going to remember where we were, because I never remember maybe we were in Boston. It was Boston, well, here in Boston, and we presented on on our school sport research, and these two teachers came up to us and shared what they do that worked in their context. And they actually did a tiered system where, for example, basketball had tier one, tier two and tier three, and they tiered their players, just like we do in, you know, hockey, for example. But the cool and educational focus of this tiered system was that if you started in tier two, but you showed a lot of progress, you moved up to tier one, and if you were in tier three, you could move up to tier two. And it was really about putting them at the optimal level of challenge, if we're making making connections to MPE and moving them around in the best places that they they can learn. So I think it is about, you know, the reimagining our traditional structure. But I can tell you from working with teachers and athletic directors and administrators in this work, it's the biggest barrier we face is to to view school sport differently, and they're also, you know, interacting with different different schools that are they're competing against in their in their game play schedule, that also, you know, plays and plays a factor. So, so there's lots of, you know, barriers to that, but it is really thinking about your purpose and then thinking outside the box.

Ty Riddick:

Well, you've beta the hook there. End. So now I can't not take it. You mentioned the meaningful phys ed framework, which, of course, is what, primarily what our podcast is dedicated to. So you're familiar with it. How do you see, or do you see connections between SS for a and the meaningful Physical Education framework? Are there, is there an overlap? Are there differences, any kind of concerns, things to be aware of.

Lauren Sulz:

Yeah, I think there's lots of lots of similarities. I'll maybe briefly touch on a few, but then then share one that you know in preparing for this podcast made me kind of think about so. I think the purpose of MP and school sport for all is quite similar. You know, teachers are or MP is a guide to help teachers in that pedagogical decision making to create meaningful experiences so they're ultimately focused on improving the experiences of students in PE and school sport is similar in the sense of we want to improve student experiences so that they enjoy sport and both with the connection to lifelong participation. Our goal with MPE is to try to get students to find meeting and participate outside of our gym walls. Our goal in school sport for all is to get students participating so that their lifelong sport, they're participating in sport lifelong. The interesting piece that I that I question with our school sport for all framework is one of the blogs that I share with my pre service teachers. Is from the I am Sportacus blog, blog posts, and it's think this one was called towards the deep end, and it talks about the Relational Approach and placing the student at the center, which we also do in our framework, we have a whole, whole child, whole child education framework, and we place the child at the center. But you know what this blog post talks about is what happens if you have or in your phys ed classes, you are going to have students with different levels of ability. And he taught, he uses the analogy of the pool. So if you take your students to the swimming pool, you're going to have somebody in the deep end that's a really strong swimmer, but you're also going to have that student on the sideline that is scared to get into the water. So I think what MPE does a really good job of is supporting those individual students wherever you are, wherever your swimming ability is, at that moment in PE class, what I wonder with school sport for all is how we can better support those students that are still on the sideline of the pool, so those students that don't know quite how to get involved in sport, don't have that that full experience in in sport. And I think John school and his work with his grade six students and and that foundational program is a really good example of that. So students that perhaps aren't engaged in community sport, or don't have the family background where they're they're involved in in in sport. How do we get those students involved and within the contextual barriers that we talked about with teacher coaches? So I think there is a lot of overlap, but I also think there's a lot that we can learn from each other.

Ty Riddick:

Dr, John, I know you guys are both involved pretty heavily with the research. So any do you see any overlap there? Yeah,

Jon Mauro:

thanks, Ty. When I'm looking at and just looking at both of the frameworks side by side, each other on the computer right now, there is a, like, a lot of overlap. I feel like, when you're looking at the motor competence, the social interaction, and we're and along with the school support for all, with quality, developmentally appropriate. How we looked into that? One of the big highlights that came on out from the school sport for all framework, and we can touch base on it as well later, but is the supportive systems. And when we look at the part of the school sport for all framework includes the using the comprehensive school health framework, so looking at partnerships and services, and when we look at that from the school school sport for all model that has had drastic benefits to to the school sport program we were working with, and just thinking about how, how, with the meaningful Physical Education framework is looking at, yes, we have the it's personally relevant learning, but how can we tie in some of those other partnerships and services to enhance some of that as well? I is been a question of mine, or when I've been trying to just dig a little bit deeper looking into it as well.

Ty Riddick:

And I think even just thinking about the why, like, we assume, like, I always assumed, I was the reason why kids are playing school sport is because they're competitive. But it is not necessarily that. Is not necessarily what gives the kids meaning. And so I'm thinking, just as we're having this conversation, we know a key pedagogy of the meaningful Physical Education framework is reflective practice. And now I'm thinking about my coaching practice and thinking, Okay, well, how I would say my PE practice is fairly reflective? Do I actually know why the kids in front of me in a sporting context are here? Do I actually know what they want from from this opportunity? Yeah, and so I'm like, Well, you know, I might be reflecting. P But I don't think that my coaching practice is maybe as reflective. So Doug, what about you?

Douglas Gleddie:

Well, yeah, a couple things. So interestingly enough, a number of years ago, a colleague and I developed a workshop that was teach like you coach, Coach like you teach, and trying to take the best things of teaching and apply them to coaching, and the best things of coaching and apply them to teaching. And it was a really fun interplay of you know, like as a coach, most coaches would never have all their players stand in lines to wait to do one thing, but some teachers would do that, right? So anyways, just a quick example, Lauren, I really liked what you said about the two frameworks, learning from each other and being involved in both frameworks. One of the things that I don't want to say, it's missing in the meaningful PE framework, but that idea of what are the supportive systems behind this? How can we work to shift and change the system like the meaningful PE framework is developed for pedagogy, right? Like it's developed for teachers to help students look at activities and physical education through a lens of meaningfulness. But that's an interesting point that I think we could explore further to flip that. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop my my meanderings here, and go back to Lauren and John. But, you know, Ty, you mentioned the the connections with reflective practice. And, you know, reflection is a huge thing in in the meaningful PE piece, I always love Tim's paper, and I never remember which one it is where, you know, one of the most important findings was you have to be intentional and craft time in your phys ed class, it's not just all about physical activity, because the goal is not to be fit. Now it's to be or to be competent. Now it's to be that for life, right? So I think that reflective practice is key. And I just heard you both talk about almost kind of democratic pedagogies as well, in terms of talking to teachers, talking to students, what do they want? What is their why? So maybe just a brief question on on how do you see the role of reflection in folks that are trying to like for folks that are trying to implement or reimagine school sport.

Lauren Sulz:

Well, I'll take a stab at that, because there's lots, lots to unpack there and and maybe this example will, you know, will help with this. But I think, you know, you were talking a bit about Doug, about the, you know, the context, and MPE, and I actually get my students to reflect, which, again, like you said, as a feature, is a main, you know, component of the MPE on the MPE framework in their IFX experience. So that's their short, short teaching practicum when they're in their schools. And they've said to me, it is, you know, there's so many contextual factors and contextual barriers within their PE class, that it's hard to create meaning. So I think, for example, a student will say, I have two classes combined in one gym, and you want me to make something personally relevant for all of my students, or at the optimal level of challenge, or have, you know, authentic social interactions within 70 students, like, I'm just trying to survive this phys ed class. So I think one thing that MPE can take from the school sport for all framework is that that idea of, you know, creating an environment and reshaping how we present school sport. So we look a lot at, you know, structures and context where, I think the MPE is more focused on the individual, but how do we get to that individual when we're placed in a position where there's lots of contextual restraints, and then if you flip that, I think our school sport for all model can look better at, you know, those individual student experiences on our sports scenes. So are they having fun? Are they experiencing delight, you know, within their participation. So now we've got them on the team. How do we create meaningful experiences on the team? So our framework is, is a lot about getting them in that process, but now I think we can kind of move to that meaning, meaning piece, yeah,

Douglas Gleddie:

and that's in because I do see some of that in the quality and the development pieces, but being but in the implementation, being explicit about some of that stuff. John, yeah,

Jon Mauro:

it's just almost highlighting, looking at the MP and the idea with the reflection is then looking at it, at the school's portfolio framework, is where we start. At the very beginning of it is evidence based. A lot of times we always think evidence based is, what is the research saying, What does paper say? Right, where evidence based can also be, what are your students saying? What are other teacher coaches saying? 100% what are the what are the parents saying? And so, I think is almost a highlight that the school support for all framework isn't just you start. Evidence based. You go all the way through. You look at access and we're done. It's supposed to be cyclical, so you keep going around and so once you've done it, once you've completed a cycle, you go back to the evidence based. Yes, you can go back and see what peer reviewed research says on best practices, but go back to your students, go back to your parents, go back to the teacher coaches, go back to yourself and reflect what worked, what was best, what didn't work, where can I have areas to improve? So yeah, I think it's just really taking that and highlighting that, the idea of what is evidence based, and how does reflective practices fall into that as well.

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, no, that's great. John, I think, back to Jody, who is on the podcast here back in December, I think, or November. She wrote a paper about an auto ethnography on being a teacher, a coach and a mom, and one of the one of the artifacts she used was her team like, I don't know what she could but team expectations that she had come up with, as the coach gave to the kids to sign, there was no engagement. So reimagining school sport can be also as simple as starting with, okay, I have my team. Let's sit down and talk. What are our team goals? What are your individual goals? And doing that together, so it doesn't have to be this big, complicated piece, right? We normally kind of wrap up with advice for people doing MPE, but in this case, I kind of want to do I did this with Haley as well. So what I'd like from each of you is, what advice would you give for those already engaged in meaningful PE looking to enhance school sport in their context. So that's part A, part B would just be to flip it. What is advice for? What do you think would be advice for school sport for all people beginning to look at meaningful PE,

Jon Mauro:

looking at, I guess I'll go from it to begin with, is people as MP years as you say, looking at school support for Allers, some of the advice from the administration, I think, would be first. You just have to start. You just have to start small. It doesn't be this grand plan, grand big change. Right off the bat, I think it's important to look at how various partnerships and services can enhance your programming that you have there all already. And I always kind of go back to is, look who's not in the gym, look who's not part of school sport, and start with that. Now to flip it on the other side, what advice would I give school support followers, looking at the MPE, I think we already highlighted it is looking at that reflective practice, really honing in on that and looking at yourself and looking and reflection with the students and other your teacher coaches and administration as well.

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, thanks, John. And I really like that who's not in your gym, and I wonder in regards to the meaningful PE framework, so that's the that's the who's not in your gym, but why aren't there? Is it because they're not engaging with peers? Is it because they don't have motor competence or the challenges, you know? So that just deepens that. So thank thanks for that. John, I appreciate it. Lauren,

Lauren Sulz:

yeah, for me, I think I, you know, I answered this a little bit with, with comparing what we can learn, learn from each other. But, you know, in, reflecting on the MPE and the context we're in right now with with schools and teachers, I wonder if we can look at, you know, MPE from a teacher lens, like, how do we create meaning for teachers, you know? And we do we focus on teachers within school, sport for all framework. But you know, when we're looking at the context we're in right now with with low teacher retention, you know, the quality of life of teachers, how can we, you know, use these features to create some meaningful PE for the teachers. So when they teach, they feel meaning and they're they feel social interaction within, you know, perhaps other other PE teachers, and you know, that might help with experience and retention. And I think of some of my students, you know, going out to the teaching, teaching world. And you know, I hope they find meaning in their in the work that they do. But you know, we're faced with with lots of challenges that that can inhibit that meaning. And then from a school sport for all place, I think, I think looking at the features specifically to who you're coaching. So if, if you know the school sport for all teacher coaches are looking at MP, and they coach girl. Girls? Well, we know from research that girls, you know, really respond to social interaction and challenge, so maybe they highlight a feature in their on their team, and focus on that feature for their for their certain demographic.

Douglas Gleddie:

Yeah, I like that. And I think again the your comment earlier, Lauren, both just and John, you said having the frameworks up side by side, but just learning and applying and really it's just work. I mean, that's that's why both of these ended up as frameworks, not models, because it's not a follow this step by step. It's look at these principles, look at these features, look at the essential conditions, the essential elements, and make it contextual to who you are and where you are, yeah,

Lauren Sulz:

and I'll just add to that, Doug, because Doug and I just received, and we received tons for our school sport research and any other work that we do. We receive a ton of contact and emails through our school sport research, but we just received one not too long ago from a parent who was frustrated with their child getting cut from a school sports team, and and he had made it last year, and this year he got cut, and it was a really school sport. Was a really impactful and positive experience for his social interaction. And he described it in more detail, but essentially what happened was, is that he got cut, but they only took 10. So last year they took 12. This year they took 10 and and he was one of the ones that were cut. So, you know, if we look at MPE, we're we're looking at individual students. So if coaches can kind of reflect on that individual piece, you know, what's best for each individual, we would reflect on that email and say what was best for that individual was to be on the school sports team, regardless of his ability, was up to, you know that top 10, he did make it the previous year, and he is benefiting it from a holistic health perspective. So just that idea of of looking at the whole child, I think we can, you know, our school sport for all ers, as you call it, can learn from the MPA pieces as as, as putting that child in the hole, which is shared from within both models. But

Ty Riddick:

well, behalf, on behalf of Doug and I and all of our listeners, thank you, Loretta and John for joining us to talk about your work related to school, sport for all, and the intersection between the SS for a and meaningful phys ed. I would say to our listeners, if you are interested in what meaning, meaningfulness, can look like in a sport or coaching setting, I would encourage you to look into the meaningfulness and youth sport resource, which we linked in the show notes, and you can also find on the learning about meaningful Physical Education website some of the core principles of authentic relationships. Being a reflective coach and a culture of belonging has some really nice overlap with the SS for a model and aspects of quality coaching and sport experience. So thank you both so much, and thank you everyone for tuning in, and we'll be back on April 7.

Douglas Gleddie:

Hey folks, thanks for tuning in to this wonderful episode with Lauren and John. As always, you can find out more about them, their work and any resources, papers, etc, reference in the show, in the notes, our guests also wanted to make sure we thank the Healthy Schools lab, Brian Torrance and the ever Active Schools team, as well as Andrea Carey with inclusion Inc for their contributions to the school support for all framework development. Special shout out today to our 13 listeners in slippery rock, Pennsylvania, USA, the nine in Dublin, Leinster, Ireland, and our one list. Listener in Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, Happy Trails. You