Reflection

To start off the semester, I was uncertain where my classes would take me. I was in a new field for education and just a little nervous of what everything was going to be like. After attending the first day of class, I began to understand where we would start going with this class but unsure what I would take away.

A couple of things I have taken away from this class are authenticity, leadership, and privilege. These really hit me at home. Authenticity and leadership can be associated with each other. As I am starting to work in the field of my major (sports industry) I am trying to become a person that can be relied on, trusted, looked up to. This class has been able to teach me my leadership style as well as the way I would like to be taught. My leadership style is to have everyone succeed, either by becoming more involved, or by encouragement. My LPI results were encourage the heart and enabling others to act as my top two. I believe that I can use these to further myself in the coaching world and in the leadership world. As competitive as I am, I do believe that encourage the heart and enabling others to act can be a great aspect of a winning coach. I will most likely be coaching next semester and I want to do so in the best way I can be me. I have already decided that any loss (during practice) entails some type of baseline punishment but the victors will be excused for their good play. I also believe that everybody is on the team for a reason, even if the reason increasing the level of play during practice. Even on that note, I believe that people should get their opportunity to show if they have earned their spot without harming us for victory. As much as people say they are they are, I really want to try to emphasize that as much as possible in the way I coach. If people don't like my style, they either will have to get over it or move on to somebody else. Lastly, I took all our privilege stuff to heart. I have always thought I have lived a very privileged life and have felt guilty for that. After learning more about privilege I came to the conclusion that it doesn't have to a bad thing. Everyone lives a different lifestyle and takes out something different from every situation. Each scenario that everybody lives in has a different life experience that can be taken away from it. For future success, I believe that I can take my knowledge that people may not have had the same experiences as others but can still take something away from that. There are a lot of things that are overlapping in peoples lives, so no one person is special (in the way that they are completely unique).

Pecks Theory

Peck's Theory is a four stage development of true authentic community. The first stage is pseudocommunity. The word pseudo means not genuine or a sham. As the book describes the issues with the community to be people showing a fake face acting like everything will be okay when in all honesty nothing is okay. The second stage is chaos, where everybody is asserting their perspectives on the different problems. The third stage is realization. This stage is everybody coming to the conclusion that their different perspectives are creating this wall. Understanding that you won't be able to move further until you have the ability to listen. Lastly, the fourth stage, true authentic community, is being able come to a consensus when conflict arises. I have seen all of these stages come together in my volleyball team to make us a better team.

My volleyball team just ended this years nationals and we placed very poorly for what we are used to. We have been putting on this fake face that we like our coach. We just don't think he is the right coach for us. We believe that we could be a great team if we were led in the right direction. The second stage is chaos. After we came in ranked 14th in the tournament and got 36th this brought out a flurry of emotions on the team. What we really think of his coaching ability and habits. As we are losing some strong players next year we want to be able to still succeed. He is great at teaching developing skills but not at coaching great players to be amazing players. After the chaotic part of everybody going on rants and what we think could be beneficial for next year we finally came to listen to each other. This would be stage three of Peck's theory. We started to actually talk to each other rather than just keep it inside and letting it fester. I have never had such a great and productive conversation as I did this weekend. It really had me thinking a lot about the future and how we could become a great team. Lastly, true authentic community, came into play after we were able to figure out what we should do looking into the future. We came to a consensus that night that we should do what we think is best for our team to succeed. We decided that a coach is definently needed for us to reach that next level. We are waiting to see how I heal. If I can play it will be hard for the older players to respect me as a coach and a player, because I obviously have a biased opinion. So I if am not going to play I will coach but I can play we are going to look into other options and see where this leads.

Identities

As a white, heterosexual, middle class, male student I have lived a very privileged life. I have never been targeting for any of these qualities. I would consider my non-target identities as a white male both of which are considered to be privileges in this world. With gender equality not being as equal as we would like it to be in this world, men are considered the dominant gender. Also the dominant race is considered to be white, no matter where in the world. It is pretty obvious about these two identities and I also obviously not trying to hide either of these. My target identities for myself would be that I am considered to be rich due to my upbringing in Los Angeles. As I did live a very luxurious childhood, the cogitation that I live in LA, more specifically North Hollywood does not mean that I am rich. None of these qualities has ever affected my life for it is the norm in America. I am also not too worried about what people think of me or say to me, which makes things a lot easier to get along in life.

Leadership Performance Inventory

The Leadership Performance Inventory survey did not come as that much of a surprise for me. My two lowest categories were Inspire a Shared Vision (19 out of 30) and Challenging the Process (18 out of 30). I personally like to meet people that are already inspired and have their own inspiration rather than to merge my vision or somebody else vision into a different mind. I also do not "Challenge the Process." This is because as much as I think I am a risk taker, I only take risks that have very little to lose. I do like to grow and improve but am scared to change anything too drastically. My next categories were Modeling the Way (23/30), Encourage the Heart (27/30), and Enabling Others to Act (28/30), respectively. I understand why Modeling the Way is my middle category because I do like have small victories by focussing on the small things but I like to do things my own way rather than shared values. Lastly, I believe that Encourage the Heart and Enabling Others to Act could be interchanged at the top for me. I personally try to get everybody involved in any type of group activity. I believe that everybody should have their voice heard, even if its a soft voice. I also believe that people should be encouraged to do better and so celebrating accomplishments in key to overall success. To increase my lower levels I think that being a motivational leader is also essential. If I am not able to motivate or inspire then I will never be able to be a great leader, to Inspire a Shared Vision. As to improve Challenge the Process, I need to outwardly show that I want to change. Without having that will to change, I am at my peek potential.

Random act of Kindness - long boarding into our hearts

This week I decided to perform a random act of kindness for my coaches son. The little rascal, Teddy, is 4 years old and has a bunch of energy. Coach likes bringing him to practice whenever he can so he can wear out some of his energy. Being that I love long boarding I decided to bring my long board to practice so teddy could try it out. This is beneficial for everyone, I get to teach more people how to long board, Teddy gets to have fun, and Geoff (coach) gets to have his sons energy diminished; it a win-win-win. Geoff and I decide it was too dangerous for him to stand up so we sat him down on the board and passed him back and forth on the floor. Hearing the sound of his laughter and seeing him have the best time of his life was rewarding for Teddy, Geoff and me. Because of this event Geoff now is getting Teddy his own long board that more fits his size. I learned that I love teaching people new things, Teddy was not my first that I have taught how to long board be he was definitely the happiest and most grateful. Teaching people a part of who I am is exciting, it makes me feel like I can help somebody reach their potential and give them something that they could go on to love.

P.S. I am the one taking the video obviously.

Moral Muteness

I personally do not like lying (or lying by omission) and try to refrain from lying as much as possible, but 2 things make me want to lie: 1. my competitive nature and 2. to make somebody's day better. As an athlete you are able to see a lot of moral muteness, in and out of a game. My competitive nature influences my body and mind to lie for the sake of winning. In the bronze medal match of my club volleyball nationals, I would see my setter come down from a block that he clearly touched but the refs missed the call. Now in a match that isn't as important or a match that isn't close, I would usually, as we call it give them an "honesty point." But since this match was very important and really close I refrained from telling the refs so we could go on and win the match by 2 points. I personally would do it again and again because I want to win more than anything else, I like being the best. As for lying to make somebody's day better, I commonly compare this to surprises. Often for surprise birthday parties the birthday boy/girl is consistently being lied to by multiple people. I have been the liar and the one lied to about birthday parties. I find that surprises are great way to make peoples days and it just proves that not every lie is a bad. I value competitiveness and care very highly, and in both circumstances I am truthful to my values. It makes me feel good when I am in a competitive atmosphere because of the adrenaline it gives me. And it makes my day when I make somebody else's day. It is a give and get relationship. Moral muteness isn't always a bad thing, as it could make somebody's day to compliment their outfit when in actuality it looks ridiculous, but they needed the compliment.

Implicit Biases

I took 3 tests, Race, Career-Gender, and sexuality. My results were a little surprising to me because I like to think of myself as a nondiscrimination person. My results were very slightly on either side of the spectrum. I do believe that as I am a straight, white, male that is how all of my results turned out. For the Race, it said that I have a slightly more preference for white people over black people. I can see that I have a slight preference purely because my group of friends are mostly caucasian but I do not go out of my way to stray away from any group of people. Secondly, I associated females with family and male with career. I do believe this association only started because of movies, TV shows, and other media. Lastly, for sexuality I am naturally also associated with straight people. I also again do not feel like I have any discrimination towards any sexuality and I personally have multiple gay and african american friends. My personal friend group includes, a black gay male, Lebanese male, Korean male, Indian male, and jewish male as my best friends. This was the most diverse group of friends I have ever heard of and I wouldn't want it any other way.

I personally did not like the quizzes. I figured it was more of a game and a memory test than an internal biases. This causes me to think that the results are not exactly accurate. My results are very minimal on every end, so it could be possible that tests are truthful and I don't realize my implicit biases.