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Today I am talking to myself and many others that just do not know when to stop working and go home.  As a career teacher and coach I have worked so many extra hours all these years and seem to always find a reason to stay a little longer to do things on my list.  As I got older I realized that I had to find better balance in my work and home life.  I got home late so many nights and suddenly it hit me that things could wait for tomorrow.  I began to make adjustments and started delegating responsibility to my team and coaches and it made a world of difference for me at home.  Being a driven person that wants to be successful, work hard and win at sports and life I would tend to be one of the first to arrive on campus and the last to leave.  I coached football in the fall, wrestling in the winter and softball in the spring.  Yes, I spent nine months a year actively coaching a sport, but lets be real it was a 12 month job when you add in summer workouts, camps, clinics, fund raisers and

Playing some form of organized sports is like a right of passage for many of us.  I grew up in a large family where every boy played football.  All of my brothers, and boy cousins played football at some point in their life.  Most of my girl cousins played basketball and softball in school, but they also played football on Sunday afternoons at my Grandma's house.  These games were brutal with heavy hitting, tackling, blocking and running.  We all got cuts, bumps, bruises, stitches and a few broken bones at some point in our childhood and teenage life.  Through these injuries and tough hits, we learned things about life that later propelled us to become productive adults, parents and friends. Learning life skills is an important part of the process of growing up and as a coach and teacher one of main focus points is to teach my kids the valuable life skills that can help them lead a good life.  A life that allows them to work, live, play and do what they want to do.  A life that is

Today we are talking about how being a goal driven person can help you become very successful in life, work and play.  The poster above tells us that we must set goals and work hard to accomplish them.  As a coach, teacher, husband, father and mentor setting goals for the team, family and my own life have always been an integral part of the process.  I cannot imagine tackling any task without a plan, end goals and dreams.  Every season I coach the team and I sit down and we talk about everyone's individual goals, team goals and how we accomplish them.  Everyone has different goals in life based on their age, living situation, finances and career goals.   When setting goals you must start with short term attainable goals that steadily clip off time to reach the end long term goal.  I teach financial math to my 11th grade students and we cover goals at the very beginning of the class.  If they do not know where they are and where they want to go then I am teaching them to fail later

Today we continue a series of blog post I have been writing using the alphabet to define successful people. These words often are mentioned when we look at successful, well rounded people that we know.  Not just your run of the mill person, but people that stand out from the crowd.  Amazing people that set themselves apart from others at work, in sports and in life.  Have you ever met a person that just attracts talented people and lights up a room when they walk in? You may be that person or certainly have the potential to be that person as well.  As I tell my students and athletes weekly, life is what you make of it and you will get out of what you put into it.  In my career I have coached with peers that met many or all of these characteristics.  I have been fortunate to coach a few guys also that had most of these traits and they went on to play high level sports, own businesses and make huge differences in their community.  I encourage you to find you letter of success.  You ask,

Today we are continuing the series on successful coaching, leading and mentoring of people.  Being successful as a leader, mentor, father, mother, coach, teacher, pastor, business owner or whatever your title is requires a skill set that is constantly developed as you become the best you can.  As I look back at my career as a teacher and coach and as a business professional I am grateful for the people I was blessed to work with that had these qualities.  They were successful at what they did and were so consistent with the habits they had to remain on top of their game.  I have tried to be the best leader I can and at times sure I failed at one or two of these qualities somewhere in the process.  The key is knowing where you are, where you want to be and how you will get there.   You don't have to be a leader to maximize some or all of these qualities.  I have worked with front line teachers, sales people and other peers that exhibited many of these traits.  They may not have want

Coaches hold the key to make or break a teams success. Coaches that have poor interpersonal skills, have huge egos, don't care about their student athletes and just use power to bully their way with the athletes put a sour taste in the mouths of the players. On the flip side, a great coach inspires, motivates, leads, guides, teaches and mentors his or her players.  They can inspire a love of the game and a life long relationship with the players they impact.  There are plenty of good sports coaches out there that keep the season humming along, but it’s those great sports coaches that kids (and parents) will remember and love forever. Here are four things those great sports coaches have in common that make student/athletes want to play for them. 1- They love to teach: A great coach loves to teach the sport and does so with passion.  They use the game and its learning to teach life skills, build relationships and build the skills of each individual athlete.  They inspire the players

Today I am talking about having a tough conversation with people and how being empathetic and showing you respect and care about what they are saying goes a long ways to building a bridge that can help you gain some type of agreement.  That agreement may be to agree, disagree or table the topic but using these little techniques will make you a better listener, talker and communicator when having tough conversations.  We face those in life with family, friends, co-workers and at times even strangers.  Knowing how to handle these situations with a calm heart and cool head are the key to getting some results from all that drama.   As a high school teacher and coach, I see this all the time with what I call "teenage drama".  I work with my kids on social skills, communication, manners and learning peer pressure to avoidance to just walk away.  I tell them did you physically hear it, see it or touch it.  If not then avoid it and walk away.  Most drama gets started by another perso

Today we are looking at a list of things that people used to do on a daily basis before technology changed everything and made them go away.  These are actually things people should continue to do and some may do these anyways.  I love technology but I also continue to do some of these things and still teach my students some of these items because I consider them to be needed life skills.  We all become so dependent on computers, phones, headphones, iPad and all those other gadgets that make life convenient and put the answer right at our hands.  I remember not so long ago traveling with the family and you had to actually take a map of the state out, locate the town or road, read the map and drive to that location.  Now we just say the address to our phone and it tells us how to get there and how long it will take.  1- Figuring out basic math in your head- Kids are graduating school and cannot make change, count forwards or backwards to make change without a cash register telling them

Today we are talking about basic life skills that we need to be teaching our pre-teen and teenage children that will assist them in being a productive young adult once they leave the safe confines of mom and dads house.  They will no longer have mom and dad to take care of their clothes, make sure the oil is changed in the car, things are clean and organized and all the other stuff we do for and with our children.  As a high school teacher that specializes in working with kids with intellectual and behavior disabilities one of my main focus points all school year is growing the basic life skills of my students.  As a coach I also assign certain duties to the team so they can learn how to do laundry, clean and keep the locker room neat and orderly.  Our children do not need to grow up having everything handed to them or done for them. Our goal as adults, parents, grandparents, teachers, mentors, aunts and uncles should always be to help our kiddos learn to live, work and play the best t

  Today I am writing about remote learning and giving some basic ideas and tips on how as parents we can not only survive but thrive during this Covid 19 mess.  As a career teacher it has been a daily learning experience for myself and my students.  It is up and down roller coaster ride of positives, negatives and in between.  With the various stages of Covid, spikes, slow downs and the gaps in between kids have learned 100% online, hybrid learning, and some even in class fulltime.  It is frustrating as a teacher and parent as it has added even more stress, anxiety, and tasks to our daily schedules that are already jam packed. I did some research and put together a simple list of things that have worked for me as a teacher and have helped the students and parents I teach to do a good job of maintaining grades, assignments, and online schedules.  It has been very challenging and is not the best option for most kids, but it is what it is for now.  As parents and teachers our options are