Hello!
Greetings! Molweni! I'm fine, thank you for asking...
Today, as I
set about starting my latest blog post, it is March 10, 2013. Which means
several things: 1) Today was daylight savings! I learned about this in a most
unfortunate way, signing onto skype to finally have a date with a friend only to
hear (via e-mail) the following: "dude, it's 1PM... what happened?".
Daylight savings happened. As it were. And it's not my fault, it's
the agricultural history of the United States' fault! So there. I accept no
responsibility for that country's silly practices that no one else in the world
follows. Pah. 2) It's 2013, and I haven't posted a new blog
post. 3) It's March -- meaning the world is entering into a transitory season
-- Spring for you! Fall for me! A beautiful, fresh, and moderate change of pace
for all. 4) It's high time for me to write a blog post.
So, two
particularly amazing things have happened since the start of 2013 and my return
to Cape Town after December holidays. Both fall under the same acronym:
TOC, aka "Training of Coaches". Is it really necessary to
acronyze (yes I know that's not a real verb) "Training of Coaches"???
you might ask yourself. Positively not, I might respond. It would
make much more sense to simply refer to them as "trainings" -- which
happens sometimes. But TOC is much preferred. Largely because Grassroot
Soccer has a special fondness for acronyms because we are all closet-nerds and
it makes us feel like we are speaking Elvish. What? Who said that?
Eherm...
What is a
TOC/Training of Coaches, anyway?
It might sound
self-explanatory, and in many ways it is. But there is more to it than
you might imagine, and therefore TOC's deserve a wee bit of explanation: Once a
year, every single Grassroot Soccer site (Cape Town, Joberg, Zambia, Lesotho,
etc...) recruits and selects new coaches. [Grassroot Soccer calls the
young leaders who facilitate their curricula "coaches" in line with
the unifying methodology and ideology of soccer that characterizes all of our
curricula. If you didn't know this already then you haven't been reading
my blog, which is very sad for you]. Anyway, the recruitment and
selection process (in theory) involves the following: months of planning,
marketing, and soliciting; weeks of interviews; days of final selection.
In practice, this process often ends up hopelessly condensed.
Although, if the quality of our new coaches is anything to go by, our
condensation has not been overly detrimental. At any rate, after the selection
process, all new coaches must go through an all-day, intensive, 5 day training.
Of course, the backbone of
the training involves guiding our coaches through the relevant curriculum.
Crucially, however, trainings also involves orienting or re-orienting
coaches to the bizarro-world called GRS -- a world in which praise is given via
the "kilo", in which TLC stands for "Tell it. Label it.
Celebrate it" and in which coaches, despite being volunteers at the
"bottom" of the organizational pyramid, are unequivocally GRS' most
valuable assets.
Skillz Core
TOC:
Grassroots
Soccer has 3 main curricula which are implemented regularly in South Africa: Generation
Skillz, Skillz Core, and Skillz Street. Generation Skillz is our HIV/AIDS and life skills curriculum designed for primary
schoolers between the ages of 10-14. Skillz Core is our HIV/AIDS and life skills
curriculum designed for high schoolers, ages 15-18. Skillz Street (holla!) is our girls only HIV/AIDS
and life skills curriculum delivered to high schoolers, ages 15-19.
Coaches receive separate training on each curriculum that they implement;
if you haven't been trained in a specific curriculum, you will not be asked (or
permitted) to implement that curriculum. Skillz Core is the only curriculum for which every
coach is guaranteed a training; an ever-evolving version of the first ever GRS
SKILLZ curriculum, Skillz Core is the first GRS curriculum taught to all new coaches.
Generation Skillz “Booster” TOC: Utshintsho
During the
second week of February, the Football for Hope Center Khayelitsha hosted a TOC
for Cape Town’s “old” coaches (coaches who have been working as a GRS Coach for
1+ years). The TOC followed a
brand new curriculum (not one of the pillar three mentioned above) – a
curriculum that grew out of the baseline results of GRS’ (currently operating)
randomized control trial, the GOAL Trial.
GOAL TRIAL,
Brief Blurb:
The GOAL Trial
is Grassroot Soccer’s first ever Randomized Control Trial (RCT), tracking the
behavior & attitudes of grade 9 learners who have received GRS’ co-ed high school
curriculum (Generation Skillz) against the behavior of grade 9 learners who have not
participated in any GRS activities.
The study, which began in 2012, will track behavior and behavior change
over the course of 3 years. Data
consists of completed surveys from more than 4,500 grade 9 learners living in
the informal settlements surrounding Cape Town and Port Elizabeth (a small city
c. 7 hours north of Cape Town).
170 questions in total, completed surveys offer a highly detailed,
sensitive, and comprehensive snapshot of participant behavior, with a
particular focus on participant attitudes towards and behaviors associated with
HIV/AIDS. Surveys also collect
demographic information to assist in data-analysis. Surveys are collected on
mobile phones (devices which South Africans generally consider to be the most
comforting personal accessory on the planet) in order to ensure that
participants’ feel secure in their anonymity; [anonymity à honesty]. In all cases, participants and parents must provide written
consent before completing surveys.
GOAL TRIAL,
baseline results:
Because it
started in 2012, the GOAL Trial has only completed its first round of data
collection à the data that has been collected is “baseline” data; “Baseline”
data does not reflect behavior change over time, but, rather indicates the state
of affairs at the
beginning of the study.
Notably,
the state of affairs reflected by the baseline data is appalling.
It is not shocking -- many staff members as well as South Africans
living within these communities expected gender-based-violence rates to be
higher -- but it is appalling.
And, perhaps more productively: groundbreaking – this is the first such compilation
of baseline data for grade 9 learners in South Africa that exists. [It’s also
the first RCT being conducted in the field of Sport for Development, but that’s
a different story…]
For context, for both
sexes, the average age of students completing surveys fell between 15 and 16.
By sex, average ages were:
Males:
15.96 Female:
15.43
The category of data that
directly fed the content of Utshintsho (Grassroot Soccer’s brand new curriculum – first mentioned above --
which our “old” coaches were trained on in February 2013) was the data reflecting
trends of gender-based-violence within these communities. A sample of this data follows below:
36% of males [avg. age 15] reported
inter-partner-violence perpetration (IPV)
-
this means that the
36% of males self-reported (admitted to) having committed violent act(s)
against a woman with whom they were sexually involved.
27% of males [avg. age 15] reported rape
perpetration over the course of their life times
-
“rape perpetration”
means, simply, rape; 27% of 15 year old males in the study admitted to having
committed rape at some point during their lives.
16%
of males [avg. age 15] reported rape-perpetration in the last 12 months
-
in an average
classroom of 50 students, at least 4 grade 9 learners admitted to having
perpetrated rape at or before the age of 14.
30% of female participants (avg. age 15) had
been victims of inter-partner-violence.
-
Females were not
asked whether they had ever committed IPV, but they were asked whether they had
ever been a victim of IPV.
This and other data led to
Utshintsho’s development as a
curriculum aimed at reducing the prevalence and acceptance of gender-based
violence; the curriculum addresses (among other things) gendered power-dynamics
and male-female relationships in local communities, as well as the retention
and utilization of power as a general, theoretical issue.
Utshintsho Training: getting right to it…
With
an explicitly gendered focus, the Utshintsho training was bound to be… an experience. [Utshintsho means “change” in Xhosa].
Trainings/TOC’s,
involve many active components.
Yet, the most fundamental component is this: a TOC is a coach’s first
introduction to the curriculum in training. During that introduction, the coach meets the curriculum as
a participant; the training team (which comes from HQ) facilitates every
practice as if the coaches were the learners who the curriculum was designed
for. As a corollary, (in theory) coaches must put on their “kid” hats during
practices. In practice, the participant/coach-in-training
line is hazy – often cris-crossed, often forgotten. But more on this later…
***
Naturally,
the day of training that stood out the most was a day fraught with
tension. The focus of that day’s
training was power.
It
started off like this: in an unexpected introduction to an insane activity, Mr.
D (genius pied piper/puppet master of the Grassroot Soccer training team) split
our coaches into two (mixed-gender) groups. To one group, he gave (blown-up) balloons. To the others, he gave pins.
Then,
he set them free.
Balloons as life:
You
might imagine the pandemonium that ensued. Naturally, I stood in the corner horrified and not a little
convinced that Mr. D had lost his mind.
Our coaches are grown; the youngest is 19. And yet, as I’m sure any age group given the same tools
might be, they were absolutely out of control. The balloon-keepers were frenzied, screaming and running as
they desperately tried to protect their poor, vulnerable sacks of air. It may have been a game, but it was not
a joke; these coaches had been entrusted with defenseless balloons and
dang-it-all they were going to protect them at all costs. At the same time, the pin-keepers were
busy seeing red. As if possessed,
the pin-keepers (men and women) chased and popped balloons like mad-people. They stalked and they hunted and they
killed. They would not rest until
every balloon had been popped. One
balloon-protecting coach literally ran straight out of the football for hope
center and clear across the adjacent square; the last remaining balloon-keeper,
the rest of us watched from the windows as 4 pin-keepers chased him, cornered
him and, finally (yes) killed his dear balloon. It may be my memory, but I do remember Lubabalo throwing up
his hands in despair when the deed had been done at last.
As
witness to this insanity (alone and in the corner) all that I could think of
was the pandemonium that was sure to ensue when coaches implemented this
activity with real live, (teenage!) Generation Skillz participants. [Thankfully, I learned after-the-fact, that this activity is
not actually part of the curriculum; the balloon “game” was only a part of the
training, used to spark a very particular sort of discussion amongst the
coaches]
Regardless,
once the last balloon had met its tragic end and the madness had finally
ceased, Mr. D gathered all of the coaches in a circle to debrief. He looked around with that classic,
puzzled-but-hopelessly-intrigued Mr. D face and asked them “What just
happened?” The coaches offered the
only sensible reply: “You gave some of us pins, and some of us balloons, and we
popped all of the balloons!” they responded.
And
here, Mr. D put on the most puzzled of puzzled expressions, took a deep breath,
had another look around, and said: “But why? I didn’t tell
anyone to go around popping balloons.
I simply gave some of
you pins… so why did you do it…?”
Interlude
Parenthetically,
it was here that I had my own epiphany.
Not only did I suddenly understand the purpose of the activity -- in a
swoosh that I truly experienced as a physical sensation -- but the absolute
genius of Mr. D’s delivery and facilitation struck me like a freight train… he gave them
the pins without any explicit instruction whatsoever, and knowing that the ones
with the pins would automatically attack the ones with the balloons! (I thought). If he
asked them why they did this, they were bound to give the most obvious of
obvious answers: “you gave me a pin!!!” – and then they had snared themselves
right in his trap. And from this
trap he would flawlessly lead the unsuspecting coaches from their land of
balloon-popping frenzy into a land of reflexive contemplation – ‘what does it
mean to have the pin in this activity?’ ‘what it means to have the metaphorical
pin in life?’ and, finally, ‘if somehow, by whatever means, you have wound up
with a pin, how does (or doesn’t) that authorize you to wield it?’
Practice 3: Unhealthy
and Healthy Relationships
Of
course, there were many more sessions of the TOC that prompted a complex series
of emotions. Since I cannot
possibly describe them all here, I’ll offer only one more description – a
description of the other session that I found most… surprising. This
time, the session was a
run-through of an actual practice: Practice 3 – Identifying Unhealthy and
Healthy Relationships.
The
practice took place outside. It
was a hot day and the turf of the soccer field (being rubber) made it all the
hotter. Actually, it took only 2
minutes of standing outside before I sprinted back into the office and
slathered my face in SPF 70. Yes,
I already donned a cap and huge sunglasses. But, as our FFHC Moms said (not at all ironically) as she
witnessed my frantic application of sun-block: “ahhh shame – it’s hard to be umlungu.” But
I digress… I’m disappointed to
recount that, when I made it back to the practice, the other women (our female
coaches who were not direct participants in this male-only practice) were
lounging on the sidelines, trying to stay in the shade, completely absorbed in
the vortexes of their phones. In
the end, it is their loss; if they hadn’t been so consumed, happening barely 2
meters away from them, this is what they would have seen…
First,
2 parallel lines, each consisting of 6 orange equidistant soccer cones. For anyone who has ever played soccer
(or for anyone familiar with the original Generation Skillz curriculum) they would have recognized a classic,
basic – drill. In the form of a
relay, players (while dribbling a ball) weave through the cones 1 by 1 (without
ever touching a cone!) and, upon successfully passing the last cone, pass the
ball back to the next player in line who follows suit. The first team to successfully see all
of its players through the relay wins.
Every
person present recognized the drill.
So the 2 (male) members of the training team facilitating the practice
surprised exactly no one when they split the male coaches into 2 equal groups
and asked each group to line up behind a set of cones. It was only then that expectations were
began to budge…
First,
Jamison (primary practice-facilitator) walked casually over to one of the teams
and pulled those coaches into a closed huddle. Those of us not in the huddle (including myself, all of the
women, and of course the other team of male coaches) could hear no distinct
words. What we could hear,
interspersed with light-hearted jabbering, was laughter and other exclamations
of excitemen. Then Jamison, having established quite an apparent camaraderie
with the one team, walked back to the front of both lines and casually
introduced the rules of the game:
1. The game would be a race to the finish. (no
surprises there)
2. the first team to see all of its members
successfully dribble through all of the cones wins. (ditto. But don’t worry,
here comes the good part…)
3. One teams, the team that Jamison had just huddled
with, would play an additional role: they would make up a new rule every round… Any rule they wanted.
Jamison
gave the floor to the rule-making team.
You
can imagine the surprised response of the other team. The rule-
makers had been briefed
during their exclusive huddle. The
other team (we’ll call them the “rule-takers”) was hit unawares. Truthfully, I was surprised by the
visible response of the rule-takers -- it wasn’t overstated, there was no
rioting.
Rather, there was
pervasive, subdued, confusion: “What???
Really...?”
The
spokesman for the rule-makers then proceeded with his first rule:
He picked up the sixth
cone of his own team’s line and appended it to end of the rule-takers. Rule-makers now had 5 cones to dribble
through. Rule-takers suddenly had
7. I think the rule-takers
initially expected Jamison to intervene.
Surely, the power to devise new rules did not include the power to
unambiguously disadvantage the other team? Of course, apparently,
it did indeed; Jamison said, “Okay, cool! Everybody ready?” The rule-takers gaped at him in stunned
disbelief, as the rule-makers excitedly prepared for the whistle. They seemed pretty pleased. Jamison waited just long enough for the
rule-takers to close their mouths before blowing his whistle. The rule-takers hustled into order,
visibly annoyed. The word “really?” seemed to hang, disbelieving, in the space above
their heads. Again, they were far from riotous. But now you could see it: they were annoyed. Me? I stayed awkwardly on the
sideline. “Really?” hung in italics above my head too.
But,
fair or unfair, the game went on and both teams played honestly according to
the rules.
The
rule-making team won.
Jamison
started to cheer.
He
ran over to the rule-makers team and congratulated them one by one. High fives, hand-shakes, “awesome
job guys!” – the rule-makers (and
Jamison) were a happy bunch.
The
other team still stood in their
line, a meter and a half away.
Hands on hips or arms crossed or hanging limply at their sides, except
for a few head-shakes and commiserating glances, the rule-takers were
silent. Once Jamison pulled
himself away from the celebration, he looked at the rule-takers dismissively
and asked them to please line back up -- they were going to play again.
In
fact, the game continued for another three rounds. Each round, the rules became more and more ludicrous. First the rule-takers dribbled
backwards. Then they dribbled
backwards with their eyes closed.
By the last round, they were on their knees, eyes closed, arms behind
their back, trying to dribble by pushing the ball with the tops of their head.
The whole time, they had an extra cone.
By
this point, you could say they were riotous. But less in an explosively outraged way and more in an exhausted,
flattened sort of way. Some
coaches sat down and refused to play.
Others appealed to Jamison in vain. Jamison listened to everything but remained dismissive: “Okay,
okay, yeah… I hear you… Can you get back in line please?”
As
an observer, I wondered awkwardly at both teams. I struggled to decide which team made me more uncomfortable
– the somber, quiet, visibly upset ones, or the taunting, jeering, jovial
rule-makers. Ultimately, I settled
on the rule-makers. They were impervious to the spirit of the other team. No, worse -- they were energized by
it. They started taunting even
through their dribbling -- taking their sweet time, pulling fancy movies, absolutely
relishing having no competition.
They laughed at the other team’s pathetic attempts to stay in the game
despite their ridiculous disadvantage.
I
felt like I was watching a psychological experiment.
And,
in fact, I was; the “kid hats” had flown out the window. These were our experienced coaches:
brutal, angry and disheartened through and through.
In Defense and
Justification…
Horribly unpleasant exercise always followed by
meaningful debrief, discussion, and explanation.
Grassroot Soccer does not seek to
create/emulate horrific power dichotomies and then send participants off to think
what they will. Rather, the
horrible-ness of the emulated experience is used as a (powerful) impetus for a
(powerful), vital discussion. A
discussion about power in our lives – how it works in communities, how it
manifests in men and in women. How
it benefits us, how it cripples us (even the “beneficiaries”!). Just like the balloon exercise,
Practice 3 triggers a very particular sort of behavior with the explicit
intention of calling that displayed behavior into question. What are this
behavior’s underlying assumptions?
What are the consequences?
Where do we see it in our communities? How does it hurt all of us? Why do we do it?
I
should also mention that post-exercise facilitation directs discussion towards
consequences. [We are only human, and as such less likely to change our
behaviors unless forced to smell the reeking odor of negative consequences that
affect ourselves]. Always using the game as a grounding
focal reference, the debrief-discussion also raises questions about
arbitrariness. No redemptive reason exists for why Jamison chose the teams that he chose. He gave power to the team he happened
to be looking at. There was no
other rationale at all. And yet,
despite the complete lack of divine inspiration, the rule-makers were free to
manipulate the rule-takers at will.
Who Benefits?
In
a way, it was comforting that some of the men on the losing team didn’t manage
to recover for the whole rest of the day.
Even after the training team had called everyone in for a practice
debrief and discussion, even after the explicit intent of the practice (to
create an unequal and unhealthy power-dynamic based on arbitrary
power-distribution) had been fully exposed and interrogated, members of the
losing team failed to recover.
They remained notably withdrawn.
One coach, always characterized by his constant face-eating grin,
remained so upset by his experience of the game that the training team
debriefed with him again, individually, apart from the rest of the group.
But
to return to my original point, that these coaches remained so upset even after
the motive of the exercise had been meticulously dissected and exposed seemed
to affirm the potential of the exercise. Yes, they were stuck in a
victim-of-cruel-injustice mentality and, consequently, withdrew from the
discussion that explored the manifestation of comparable power-dynamics in
their community at large. But, crucially, if those coaches left that room
feeling horrible, slopping through the sticky psychological mud of arbitrary
exploitation, I’m optimistic that somewhere below that slop lies a tiny seed of
appreciation – one that can grow and manifest (perhaps subconsciously) in a new
perspective on their own community, and (again, perhaps subconscious) an
appreciation for the sludge that fully half of their community-members trudge
through each and every day.
Reflections…
I’m
not expecting a revolution. [At
least, not yet]. But I am hopeful
that, as a direct result of intensely uncomfortable experience of power (in
something as trivial as a soccer-relay!) these coaches will hesitate the next
time someone gives them a pin [I’m mixing metaphors… I hope it works].
That’s
all: just a hesitation… maybe even slight. Hesitation is movement, and movement is slow, but so it may
be – it’s movement all the same.
I’m
afraid this post ran away from me – even more so than usual (way more so than
usual). But I don’t want to close
before making one final point: there are many things that SKILLZ practices do
right. I’ve covered at least three
over the course of my blog. But
the one I want to leave you with today is something tricky – it’s something
that I experienced but never really grasped (not before I was half-way through
writing this blog post at least).
It’s something clichéd, but many true things are. “Unhealthy and Healthy Relationships”
could have been a conversation-based practice. Many of our SKILLZ practices are. But living the issue – in game or in play – offers a taste
of the substance that we would otherwise miss. I wonder, honestly, whether play-therapy ever really becomes
incompatible with our over-developed adult brains or whether, for some tragic
reason or another, our over-developed brains have abandoned (arbitrarily) a
crucial human mode of comprehension.
