It's all in the journey

Mickey Arthur at a Cricket Australia press conference

Successful teachers and coaches have a lot in common: the skills required to get a team or individual to be the best in their sporting field is not that dissimilar to getting a student to ace an exam or write a great assignment. So it was with some interest that I saw a tweet about an interview with former Australian cricket coach Mickey Arthur (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/interview-mickey-arthur/4905796?section=sport).

For those who don't know, Mickey Arthur was the South African born coach of the Australian cricket team up until just before the Ashes started a month or so ago. A controversial selection in the first place, his tenure as coach was littered with rumblings about his style and ability to deal with the various egos that dominated the team. The most notorious of these incidents became known as "homework-gate" in which a number of players were sent home during a tour of India for not abiding by team rules and failing to hand in a reflection task on how they could contribute to the team's future success. Predictably at the time there was a chorus of criticism: how dare this non-Australian blow in tell our cricketers what to do (but of course we aren't racist in Australia, we just don't let the foreigners near the cricket team unless they are good spin bowlers) and why is he treating them like children and making them do homework?

At the time I felt a fair bit of sympathy for Mickey Arthur and I secretly suspected all cricket following teachers might have too - even if they didn't like a South African coaching Australia. The frustration of students not completing homework can become a huge millstone around your neck as you are required to cajole then threaten and finally carry through on detentions and phone calls home to get that one paragraph summary that would only take 5 minutes to write if they just bloody did it! The alternative is to make threats and not follow through but that then makes the situation worse as you need to reinforce any punishments that much more to ensure they don't take advantage of you. So I could understand his annoyance at paid professionals, with honestly not that much to do apart from attend training and play cricket, being too lazy to write a few sentences suggesting ways they could contribute in the next game. Apart from the trivialisation of homework (NB: I'm sure every cricket following student in Australia saw it as tacit encouragement to not do their homework), it seemed to me much more about respect and attitude. The act of not handing in something the coach asked is just disrespectful and says that you don't care about the team or anyone apart from yourself. Moreover, the players sent home did seem to have the biggest egos in the squad so maybe this assertion was not far off the mark.

Fast forward to the Ashes and Mickey Arthur is sacked as Australian coach. Cricket Australia cite poor performances and a lack of team discipline as the reasons - the irony being that this came from the same people who refused to properly sanction the "homework-gate" offenders and allowed them to retain their senior positions in the team. They then appoint an Australian - thank God the masses cry as they vehemently deny that it was performance and not Arthur's South Africaness they disliked - to coach the team as ex-players galore claim that this is the boost the team needs to win the series. Moreover, the ill-disciplined boof-head (sorry David but it is true) that sparked Arthur's sacking even admits he is to blame for destroying someone else's career while he gets second chance after second chance and making heaps of money for his troubles. Unsurprisingly to anyone who could stop being a one-eyed supporter for half a minute, the Australian team has not performed any better under new management and all hope now rests on home ground advantage. So it was great at this time for Mickey Arthur to give an interview on ABC Radio.

If I had been in Mickey Arthur's shoes I would have been pretty bitter and angry. Here was a guy trying to coach a team in a period of rebuilding, following unprecedented and sustained success, and rather than support he gets the boot. Also, the irony that the same players who were ill-disciplined are rewarded with spots in the team and full forgiveness by the new coach would have made my blood boil. So as I eagerly await his first hand grenade about the Australian team all I get is... happiness. What is this? Isn't he angry or upset? Where does this happiness come from? He must be nuts.

As I listened more carefully, particularly as he described his coaching philosophy, I realised that he was a much better person than I am because he was above all that. His main concern at the time, and to this day as he watches the Ashes from his living room, was the individual development of players as people not cricketers. For him, it was much more important to develop an environment and culture with the right values that fostered individual development rather than just teach them the right way to bat or bowl. Moreover, even though he no longer coaches them, he recounted with passion his frustration at watching them make the same mistakes over and over, wishing he could just step in and give them a quiet word about hitting the ball straighter so that they don't get out again. Finally, he was still so in love with a game that had treated him badly of late. Rather than throw in the towel, he was working at a school and starting his own cricket academy: giving back to a game that has given him so much, as he put it.

This got me thinking about the parallels between what he does as a cricket coach and my job as a teacher. Every time my students attempt to analyse a film or research a history topic they are like a Shane Watson striding out to the middle to face an over from Jimmy Anderson. I can give them all the advice, encouragement and wisdom of my many years of teaching as I like but ultimately they have to score the runs of learning themselves without me. Moreover, we all try to create that particular learning environment that fosters creativity, exploration and learning within each class for every lesson and we can run into a Warner or Watson who just won't play ball. However, they just don't do their homework but go out on the field and deliberately sabotage the game for everyone else into the bargain. So do we write them off? Fortunately, teachers tend to take the Mickey Arthur approach of giving them another chance and helping them along their journey rather than cheer on their failures.

The biggest thing for me though was how Mickey Arthur talked about developing the cricket side as a journey. His greatest disappointment was not getting the chance to turn good players into great ones: the lost chance at tapping into the undeveloped potential that the team contained. This reminds me of a student I mentored for 2 years and who is a mad Liverpool fan. I was surprised when he asked me to act as his mentor, he didn't seem that keen on me as a teacher, but I wanted a chance to work with someone one on one through to year 12. After a slowish start, we were both a bit tentative and unsure of how to be a mentor/mentee we eventually found a nice balance of study advice, proof reading and just talking football. For me the joy was in watching him go from lacking confidence in his studies to becoming a more confident and diligent student. It didn't matter what marks he got at the end of the day because I had seen him grow as a student and that made the whole process worthwhile. I can think of similar cases with some of my unofficial students and they all have the same core principle: it was the journey that mattered, often ending with a good result too.

The other big thing for me was the reasons Mickey Arthur went into coaching. Recognising his own limitations as a cricketer, good but not great, he used his love of cricket along with his communication skills to become a successful international coach with the South African team. It was his desire to communicate with people and build relationships that brought him this success. More importantly, even though he was sacked, he could still be satisfied with the effort he put in. As he stated, he gave everything for the job while he did it and thus even the events surrounding his sacking could not diminish the pride he had in his effort. This too is a lot like being a teacher: sometimes we can work really hard with a particular student, from one on one help to special scaffolds and differentiating tasks, but still experience that same disappointment when they either give up or maybe fail in the big test or assessment. However, if we know that we did all we could to help that student then we can take the satisfaction of the effort we put in and hope that next time it pays off.

So that's my longer than expected rant/reflection/potted history of Mickey Arthur and his relevance to teaching. I recommend that everyone listen to the interview (http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-22/interview-mickey-arthur/4905796?section=sport), even if you aren't a teacher but then why are you reading this blog(?), just so you can be inspired by his passion, dedication and sheer positivity in the face of hard times. While coaching the Australian cricket team and teaching in a classroom may seem poles apart, his journey and the journey he wanted to take the team on can inspire us all to give everything we have to every day of class. We might see our kids get out leg before again and again but hopefully we can help them far enough along their journeys to eventually reach that century.