By Owen Yancher, UCLA School of Ed & IS Transformative Coaching and Leadership
The late John Wooden recognized a close tie between coaching and teaching.
“The coach is, first of all, a teacher,” Wooden opined near the end of his legendary basketball coaching career at UCLA..
His words and accomplishments intrigued Dr. Erin Powers, a founding member of the School of Education and Information Studies’ Transformative Coaching and Leadership (TCL) program.
“I was really curious about particular ways that coaches engage and support student-athletes,” Powers says.
Exploring issues in contemporary athletics, Powers found parallels between problems in classroom settings — discoveries that eventually inspired her doctoral studies in the field of Education.
“I started to think about those environments and compare them to schools where students have been marginalized or dehumanized. And I wondered if a particular theory – culturally relevant pedagogy -might be applicable in athletic settings the way that it is in teaching spaces.”
As the Director of Academic Support for the TCL program, Powers develops close relationships with each and every student, mentoring them through their activities, both inside and outside the classroom.
“In a lot of ways, the students in TCL have a lot in common with anyone who’s holding down a full-time job and taking classes or learning in addition to their other responsibilities,” Powers explains.
Between coaching gigs, part-time work, internships, parenting, and, for some students, commitments to UCLA’s NCAA sports teams as athletes, TCL students generally balance a heavy load.
“They have big hearts,” Powers adds. “And they’re able to keep what’s most important in mind about life.”