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.