Coaching in the Classroom

As an osteopath you recognize that there is theoretical osteopathy and there is osteopathy in practice. These are not the same things at all and I think when I started teaching at the CAO I recognized that teaching alone wasn’t going to be sufficient. A teacher can’t simply flip through a PowerPoint slides and expect people to understand what they are speaking about. Teachers also need to coach students through a process and show them what they have done right and wrong. I had many mentors in the hockey world. I had been exposed to Russian professional coaches, Belgian coaches and Swedish coaches. I had seen how they train athletes in Europe very differently than in North America and I recognized there is a very different kind of mindset in how to develop mechanical skills. When I am teaching I draw on those experiences. I am told that I am able to speak to students in a different way and not simply profess information from an academic perspective but teach them how to affect change on the table through structure and function and how to take simple techniques and apply them through logic and reasoning in the application of treatment. My understanding of teaching has been developed over the years by looking at how to improve the pathway of communication. Something that was originally based in sport.