Every HS Varsity Head Coach should be on Twitter

My previous blog post explained how Twitter has impacted my professional growth.  This post is going to briefly discuss why I believe every high school varsity head coach needs to be utilizing Twitter.  Here's why:

• Twitter allows coach's to publicize their own teams in a very easy format.  It takes no more than a few seconds to post scores, results, upcoming games/matches, etc.  The more people are informed, the more support your team will receive. 

• Local sports writers covering prep athletics can easily follow your teams.  When I was a varsity head coach, I frequently received compliments from local writers about how much they appreciated my website, where I would post information daily.  Sure, we as coaches often fall into the trap of, "Well, if they want the information, it is their job to come get it."  Hey, I was a Head Men's Tennis Coach, and I knew that I had go bust my rear end to get some ink in the local papers.  If you truly want your teams to get attention, you've got to publicize yourself.  Twitter allows this to be done with a very little time requirement. 

• The parents of your players will love it.  Happy parents = less headaches. 

• Twitter helps promote student body support for your support.  Your followers will extend to current non-participating students, alumni, and even students of other schools.

• The number of coaching resources on Twitter are endless.  I don't care if you coach basketball, tennis, or swimming, any coach can find hundreds of resources on Twitter.  The days of attending all-day coaching clinics are gone when you can reach out to the top coaches in the country, especially college coaches, on a daily basis through Twitter.  My mentor, while I was an Assistant Varsity Basketball Coach, told me that any clinic is beneficial if you can come away with three things.  On Twitter, you can pull away much more than that.

• There are hundreds of fitness training resources, as well, that are not necessarily sport-specific.  Most gyms have Twitter accounts that provide various workouts, exercises, and health tips daily. 

These are the main reasons why I believe every high school varsity head coach should be on Twitter.  As a former Head Coach who kept as intense of a schedule as most D-1 tennis coaches, I know that time is of a minimum.  But, I believe the above reasons are well-worth the time for all coaches to utilize Twitter.

A HUGE thank you to all high school coaches for everything you do for our student-athletes.

Thanks for reading and please follow me via Twitter @CSmithGoBlue.

CS

The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.

A Twitter Skeptic-Turned Twitter Advocate

I will admit:  I was skeptical of Twitter.  I was one of those people: "What's the point of Twitter?"; "What can you do with only a few sentences?"; "What type of people spend their time simply reading what other people 'tweet'?"

I probably should tell the story of how I even got introduced to Twitter.  This summer, I was in Atlanta with a group of six guys, taking in a weekend of July Atlanta Braves baseball.  My buddy John was talking about Twitter and how he believed I had an account.  I told him that I never use Twitter and had no idea what in the world he was talking about.  He got a bit frustrated and said, "You are telling me that there is some other 'Craig Smith' that lives in 'Huntersville' that is a big enough Michigan fan to name his account 'CSmithGoBlue'?"

Apparently, in 2009, when I received my first Blackberry, I created a Twitter handle simply because the App was on my phone.  I never used it.  I never logged in.  I completely forgot about it.  My buddy John told me, "Log-in with your normal password, see if it works."  Sure enough, it was an account I had created.  I had NO IDEA how this single moment was going to impact my life professionally.

I found myself starting to investigate what this Twitter thing was all about, mostly while lounging around at the pool or with evening baseball on in the background (anyone else LOVE summer?).  I stumbled across many educators that were using Twitter to share educational articles, professional development, and simply conduct ongoing conversations.  I was blown away...people were using Twitter for more than "socializing"...they were using social media to better themselves as instructional leaders, teachers, school executives, etc. 

When we started school, I mentioned that Ashbrook High School needed a Twitter account (@AshbrookHS) to help promote the school and share important information.  Not only am I using Twitter to better myself professionally, but also am assisting to transform our school to 21st-century communication.

Now, there isn't a single day that goes by where I don't find useful resources via Twitter.  I have "met" many school leaders that not only provide ideas, but inspire me to be a better administrator every day.  In my Weekly Update's to my teachers, I always provide at least one instructional resource or article, and the majority of these have been found through Twitter.

I began conducting conversations with teachers about the endless benefit from utilizing Twitter.  Some, like myself, seemed skeptical of how they could benefit from this social media.  But, many teachers have voiced enthusiasm about getting "on board" with Twitter to reach out and share with other teachers in their respective disciplines.

I have even contacted some individuals that manage the professional development for our entire district and offered to conduct PD on how Twitter can better the educator, hoping to first work with other administrators and eventually offer the training to teachers.  Hopefully, my district will take me up on the potential of providing PD to administrators across the district.  If not, I may simply conduct an "unofficial" PD off-site somewhere in a very casual setting.

I find myself frequently saying, "Trust me, there is so much you can gain from Twitter."  Amazing.  I used to be one of those skeptics.  Now, I'm an advocate.

Thanks for reading and please follow me via Twitter @CSmithGoBlue

CS

The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.

Believe in Craziness School, or BCS

Let me indulge you in some satire:

I am proud to welcome you to the Believe in Craziness School, or BCS, for short.  We do things a little differently here, but our primary focus is to recognize our top senior students at the end of the year in a very special ceremony.  Staff, students, and community members know how important this ceremony is; they find it so important, you can hear people debate and predict which students will get recognized all year long.  Some people claim to be "experts" at predicting which students will get recognized, but even the experts are surprised from time to time.

I should probably start by sharing how we determine which students to recognize.  There are three components to our "rankings":  The first is overall grade point average, which takes into account final grades only.  Second, our staff votes weekly on their top 25 students of the senior class.  This is no easy task!  Every so often, a top-ranked student will stumble on a test, become "upset" with themselves and possibly drop in the rankings.  I can't prove it, but I sometimes feel certain staff members votes their students higher than others simply because they know them better.  But teachers know their students better than anybody!  Third, and the most confusing part of the equation, are the "computer ratings".  These incorporate other variables, such as strength of a students' schedule, difficulty of teacher, extracurricular activities, and attendance.  Like I said, this part is confusing.  Sometimes the computer rankings rank a top-notch GPA student lower for no apparent reason!!

Whew, that was exhausting.  But we are not done yet!  At Believe in Craziness School, we honor ten students at the ceremony.  You may think that using the above three-part formula, we will honor the students ranked #1-10.  There are some extra stipulations to who gets recognized:

The #1 and #2 ranked students automatically get honored, no matter what.  Plain and simple.  Whoever is ranked in the top two spots.  That's easy enough.  Those two students get the majority of the attention at the ceremony. 

We automatically honor the top performing student in AP Calc, AP English, AP US History,  AP Government, and AP Biology.  These are what you would call the "traditional" top-level classes, so these students will all get honored.  It actually doesn't matter what they are ranked from the formula, we will honor these students.  One year, the top AP Calculus student wasn't even ranked in the top 25 and we still honored them (behind closed doors, we admitted that was just a weak Calculus class that year).

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the "neighborhood" rule.  To avoid one feeder area of the school receiving too much attention, no more than two students per neighborhood can be recognized.  For example, if students ranked #1, #2, #7, and #10 ride the same bus, then the last two students will not be honored.  This is always a tough pill for the parents to swallow, but the way I look at it, you knew how strong your neighborhood was when you moved there.

Finally, the most controversial aspect of the ceremony.  I get to select the final three students to be recognized.  Of course, I put a lot of stock into the formula mentioned previously.  In fact, I make sure that any student selected is in the "top fourteen".  What good would the formula be if I didn't?  But one extremely important factor to consider is the amount of family that student could deliver at the ceremony.  It may sound bizarre, especially when the primary purpose of the ceremony is to honor the top students, but I can't have empty seats in the auditorium!  I'll admit that I will tend to favor those students with really large alumni...I mean, families, over students with small families.  The best case is if a student will have family fly in from out of town and have to stay in hotels.  That helps with the local commerce (cha-ching)!  One year, I completely overlooked the student ranked #7 and honored the student ranked #11 instead, simply because he was much more popular within the student body.  I felt bad for the student ranked #7, but you should have seen the crowd that showed up to support the selected student!

So there you go.  You may be a little apprehensive about how we recognize our top students at Believe in Craziness School.  It does provide a little controversy in what should be a celebration of an incredible school-year.  But really, we spend so much of our time dealing with student discipline that it sometimes overshadows everything else.  Just like the student that I have to suspend for skipping.  Wait, he self-reported the skipping??  Maybe I will just give him Saturday School...


This post is not intended to mock any specific school, university, or athletic association.  It's just for fun.


Thanks for reading and please follow me via Twitter @CSmithGoBlue

CS

The opinions shared in this blog belong to Craig Smith and do not represent the school or district in which he works.