Teaching Tip #154

Teacherscribe’s Teaching Tip #154

Maybe the most disastrous thing about limiting beliefs is when we let them become global.  Just because something doesn’t work once, we assume that will be the result every single time we attempt the task.

Again, I see this occur in teaching all the time.

Some classes eat up our class blog.  They love going there for videos and discussions.  Yet, there are some classes that want nothing to do with it.  No matter what, they visit the class blog only when I force them.

I can’t assume, however, that all classes will react that way.  If I do, I am limiting my teaching, and worst of all, limiting my students’ learning.

This happened to me in coaching.  Early on in my coaching career I worked with a legend, Coach Drechsel.  In the biggest game of their season, they were facing Browerville in the first round of the state playoffs.  They just tied the game on a huge drive.  Since they never kicked extra points, they would have to go for two.  I couldn’t wait to see what Drechsel would call.  He was famous for his straight t formations and hammering the ball.  Yet, he called a counter that totally fooled the defense and Blaise Larson scored the two points and RLF won.

When I began running the offense for the 9th grade team at LHS, I often tried the same play on the goal line and when going for two.

It failed all the time.

When the defense was in every gap, it was simply too easy for them to shoot through the gaps of the pulling guards and blow the play up.

I bet if we can the counter 10 times in the red zone, it failed 10 times.

Yet, we began running a better counter, called the Criss-Cross, to great effect.

And after we had it down, I began calling it in the red zone and it was incredibly effective.  Now there were some reasons why this was more effective than the regular counter (better ball fakes) though we had more pulling linemen than the counter.

I even remember calling it on the 5 yard one game with one of my favorite coaches, Coach Pete, watching with me from the sideline.  Our runningback was nailed for a five yard loss by a blitzing linebacker.

“Avoid the criss-cross inside the ten,” Pete advised me.

“Ah, dammit! The center missed his downblock on the blitzing linebacker,” I said.

The next play I called a power and we got those five yards back plus another 8, which left the ball at the two, which was the same exact spot where Dreschel called his great counter play.

I called the Criss-Cross this time.  Our running back walked untouched into the end zone as every defender went after the same runner who had just taken the ball down to the goal line, but he didn’t have the ball.

I smiled at Pete.

“Good call,” he said.

That play was a huge success and resulted in a lot of touchdowns for us over the years  So if I had let that one limiting belief become global (that we could never run a counter play in the redzone), I would have left a lot of points off the board).

What is a limiting belief that you let become global?