16
2012
Minerals 2 (and a touch of Fibre)
An article by Stephen Pritchard
Having had a pretty successful first experience working with minerals I was surprised how things initially went awry second time around. Essentially, I ran the same session as before, but at my other junior badminton club, with players in the same range of ages and abilities.
It was interesting this time though to watch one group who were so far outside of their comfort zone that they were simply unable to perform the tasks set. The problem was one of organising themselves as a group and assigning roles. In the past I would have dived in, told each person what to do and walked away happy that they were now working as I wanted. This time I chose to leave them to it and see what transpired.
After a period of “messiness” one member of the group approached me and explained that the rest of her group were “messing around”. Rather than solving this problem, I suggested that I felt she was able to organise the group to perform the tasks set if she wanted to do so. After brief protestation, off she went and got her group working through the tasks!
So, here we see the introduction of the fibre nutrient (The opportunity to coach and support others). I’m not sure that this helped her become a better badminton player (other than by actually enabling her to finally practice!) but it will be interesting to see how she reacts next time I put her in a similar situation.
