STOKE CITY'S globetrotting Community Coach Warren Leat is back on his travels again . . . having flown out to Kenya to spend a week delivering the Premier Skills Course Phase Two.
Following the success of a similar visit to Senegal in the Autumn, Warren has joined up with Adam Lea from Portsmouth and Head Coach Gareth Prosser from Wolves for this latest trip.
He will be keeping stokecityfc.com in touch with the whole experience of coach education in Kenya on a daily basis. Here is his account of day four:
Kenya Day Four
We have now reached the half way point of the course and today's activities involved both classroom and practical workshops. With the emphasis on the development of the participants being able to influence people through giving and receiving information, through giving presentations, working in groups as well as their mentoring skills as coaches.
The first workshop involved them working in their country group and they had to develop a campaign so that their country could host the World Cup. For this they had to design a poster and then present to the staff who then asked questions about their presentation. The four groups took great care in preparing, and Malawi and Uganda had even brought along their national flag as a prop. From an educational setting the participants worked together well to reach the deadline set, through good teamwork. Their presentations were well delivered with great enthusiasm, but most importantly they responded to the questions asked by the panel (Gareth, Warren, Adam and Elizabeth from the British Council), with improving confidence. This is particularly important as they will return to their communities to become a figure head this was a great exercise . . . Oh and by the way, Malawi was the winner.
We then moved outside to the stadium where four participants were selected to coach sessions for 10 minutes and four participants were selected to observe and become the mentor.
This practical workshop was aimed at showing how the participants can mentor their coaches in their communities. The session worked very well and they were very positive towards giving feedback and their manner when giving feedback was good. They did have to be shown that they were not to focus on the sessions or the players specifically, but how the coach conducted the session. However, for many of them mentoring is a new concept and this was good work in progress.
In the afternoon, we returned to the classroom to do a workshop on long term planning. The participants had never really planned for the long term so this workshop turned out to be really useful. After guidance from the staff, the participants had to design a 12-week football plan for a community group they worked with. What was particularly striking about this was that the participants saw how writing a plan such as this could take their projects to the next level, not only for their coaching but for putting a plan in place for their coaches to deliver. Additionally the participants began to see how different sessions of the week were linking together, for example planning for the long term helps you when ensuring that their coaching sessions are inclusive.
Overall so far, the participants have contributed greatly to the sessions, and the group from the four countries have worked well together. Even though the language barrier does not exist; the participants continue to give input into the workshops which justifies their selection from Phase One. Furthermore, this has created a fantastic overall atmosphere that continues to have a positive effect on the course.
