Tennis Coaching and Teaching - Avoiding Misunderstandings

How a Tennis Coach or Instructor Interacts With Students Can Make all the Difference

Your Personality

First off we all have a template of behavior formed by our upbringing and sometimes that is helpful in teaching and other times it must be overcome.

Self Assessment

Here is how I see my own actions over four plus decades of teaching:

For me, looking back at my early teaching compared to now I was a hard case drill sergeant and I didn't care who was on the other side of the net, they all needed to work. It was probably because I was raised in a military family where discipline was everything. I've softened up a lot and now think happily of my last twenty years of teaching where I just loved being out on the court with anyone else who wanted to be there.

You can adapt and change

To me if we aren't all laughing at least part of the time I wasn't doing it right. As for exposure to varied groups of people, my last post retirement gig was teaching at a college where I had exchange students from all over the world including Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South and Central America. Treating everyone with respect worked well and I can say that everything came down to careful communication to avoid misunderstandings. If you're smiling, laughing, and people see in your manner and behavior that you are genuinely happy to have them out there with you there never seems to be a problem.

Focus on the Job - Teaching Tennis

Focus on getting the job done of teaching tennis rather than taking sides in the current social issues. That to me is how it should be handled.