Personality Theory

Whew- 

Very gold 8th & 11th graders, both with short fuses and big senses of purpose.

Very blue 6th grader trying to be the peacemaker.

Fortunately the Mom of the 8th grader (who's aunt of 6th and neighbor of 11th) has plenty of blue too. 

Not sure how it would've went if she'd been another gold charging in to make demands instead of  joining with me to work together at resolving things.

Mostly miscommunication, misperception, and major amounts of defensiveness.

Is it any wonder though why I sometimes wish I could quit teaching and coaching and go back to grad school full time to get a degree in psychology? I'd much rather analyze these personalities than have to negotiate between them.

Clashing Titans

I have a Junior and an Eighth grader who both have strong personalities. Both have tons of skill, confidence up the ying-yang, and short fuses.

I was really proud of my junior high squad at their football game this afternoon. Only 4 of the 7 were there, but they cheered often, loud and confident. They're creative and full of enthusiasm. And for the most part, they get along great.

I made the mistake of giving them a little too much... something, rope? room? power? liberty?

The Eighth grader (the other 3 are Seventh graders) begged to be able to cheer at the Freshman/JV game too, after the Middle School game. I figured, they were doing a good job. We don't have a JV Cheer squad and our Varsity squad only cheers at Varsity games. So- I figured maybe it would be a way to support the underclassmen boys while giving the girls more experience. I made it clear that they MAY do this, but that they weren't the JV squad, and that I couldn't be there, because I needed to get home to my kids. 

After I'd been home for about a half an hour, I got a series of phone calls from my Junior about their behavior at the JV game. She was working at the concession stand. She told me that they were cheering in just spandex without skirts. I told her that it was okay to tell them that this was not appropriate and ask them to put their skirts back on or stop cheering.

She called me back to tell me that they called her a "bitch," and that she felt that they shouldn't be allowed to be in Cheer anymore.

I shouldn't have let them cheer without me there. I shouldn't have sent her to correct them, I should've known that she comes off too strong and I should've known that they wouldn't respond well to her.

I also should have let the whole thing cool off and let the dust settle before I did anything about it. Instead, I sent the 4 girls a message on facebook, telling them that the Junior is my representative. "If you disrespect her or call her names, you are disrespecting me and calling me names," I told them.

I tried not to use threats and hoped to get them to think about their actions. I said that  I hadn't decided yet if there need consequences and asked them to think of what would be fair and bring me their ideas.

I asked to meet with them the next day.

Naturally, nothing can be that easy. The Eighth grader wrote back and threatened to quit, and let me know that two of the three seventh graders would quit with her.

Then, there's another reply, claiming to be her Mom, who would like to meet with me at school tomorrow morning. She was very upset because she said that the Junior was threatening her daughter.

Drama, drama, drama. This is the kind of thing that drives people out of coaching cheerleading.

The Junior sent me the transcript of a volley of texts between herself and a Sixth grader- who I think is either the Eighth grader's sister or cousin. The Sixth grader not only complained about how she had yelled at the junior- highers, but that she had said disparaging things about the handicapped boy on the high school squad.

I advised her to just try to avoid both of the Sixth and Eighth graders.

Dear Lord, grant me wisdom and patience. Let the meeting with this parent go well tomorrow.

I don't know why I'm not an anxious, nervous wreck about this. Mostly I'm annoyed. What we have here are a bunch of bruised egos. I'd prefer that they all would show deference toward one another, have some humility and perspective and move on. It's unfortunate because all three of these girls have a lot of what you want in a cheerleader.

Comes with the territory.

Too Blue?

The other day a parent of one of my cheerleaders was frustrated that girls weren't coming to practice regularly and that they want to wear boys' football jerseys over their uniforms on game day. She suggested that I needed to be more of a hard-ass, "like that cheer coach on that TV show, Glee."

I listened to her appreciatively but reminded her that we're a very small school (fewer than 300 kids, grades 6-12) and it was difficult to scrape up enough kids willing to come out for cheerleading, especially since we have to share their interest with Volleyball, Cross Country, Drill Squad, family, part time jobs, and of course, friends and boys.

If I reprimand them too sternly, there won't be any cheerleaders.

My wife is a guidance counselor at another school. She's explained to me about a personality system that's been around since 1979 when author Don Lowry modeled it as a graphical version of both Keirsey’s Temperament and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.

In Lowery's system, Blues seek harmony and seek to nurture and build people up. Blues are relational. Greens are conceptual, analytical, and logical thinkers. Golds are highly organized, sometimes black and white thinkers that like to establish and maintain policies, procedures, and schedules- control freaks. Oranges are creative but physical and impulsive, they like to have fun, need stimulation, freedom, and excitement.

One would Under this concept, you might imagine that the best cheerleaders are are oranges. Most people go into teaching because they're blues. A lot of artists are green and plenty of coaches and administrators tend to be golds. On the "True Colors" quiz, I score really dominant in the blue and heavy in the green. The few episodes of Glee that I've seen, Sue Sylvester here strikes me as really heavy on the yellow side.

The point of all this is that the green in me is driven to try to rationalize my short comings as a coach, and the blue in me loves and wants to mentor the kids on my squad. Meanwhile, what little yellow I have is tormented by how much better the squad could be. I wish I had at least an ounce of orange in me so that I could fire them up and show them how to REALLY make cheerleading fun.

I talked about this all with a dear friend of mine, who happened to have been my mascot when he was a high school Senior about ten years ago. He agrees that I let my cheerleaders walk all over me and that they need to have a lot more pride and respect for standards. But he did concede that many of them are probably drawn to our squad because they need a stable but empathetic adult in their lives.