Inspiration tends to be at a high for just about everyone during the Olympics. Even those claim they have no interest in the games are usually sucked in by the pageantry, the controversy, and (hopefully) sportsmanship. All too often we look at the athletes involved like some kind of alien beings completely separate from us. Not so. As teachers and student teachers, we have a lot to learn from (and a lot in common with) professional athletes when it comes to one area in particular: preparation and psychology deeply affect our performance. Below are just a few areas of sports psychology that intersect with the daily lives and practices of effective teachers:

Image courtesy of fundforteachers.org.

1.) Athletes practice in their minds.
One of the most memorable scenes of Cool Runnings is when the team gets ready for their race by practicing in the tub, envisioning the course and imagining their movements in each turn. Visualizing the race, simulating in-game experiences, and imagining the feeling of being on the podium are all popular strategies for professional athletes. It turns out they all come with a certain degree of psychological credibility. MindTools notes that visualization and guided imagery are useful stress management tools and allow individuals to imagine working towards specific outcomes.

So do teachers.
Effective teaching and learning doesn’t always have a finite outcome. Sometimes our objective in teaching is simply to help our students reach their own understanding of a given topic. Even so, visualizing the different twists and turns your lesson might take, timing yourself in each section, and envisioning your delivery can all help limit the amount of anxiety you carry into your lesson.

2.) Athletes need to decide what they want out of their sport.
Medals and championships are usually the result of careful planning and detailed goal setting. Effective goal setting balances long-term and short-term goals, but most importantly, your goals should be performance-based. David Harrison suggests that the benefits of goal setting are that it helps develop focus, motivation, persistence, and new learning strategies.  Not everyone becomes a professional athlete with a view towards gold medals and championships either. Goals are individual

Not all GAs/TAs go on to become teachers. 
Realistically, not all GAs/TAs aspire to be teachers. Some might even hate teaching. That doesn’t mean that you don’t have something to gain from your teaching experience. GA and TA positions help to develop transferable skills that can be applied to just about any field. So whether you have aspirations of being a tenured professor or a project manager on the Mars expedition, determine how being a GA/TA can help you achieve your goals.

3.) Good athletes have a Performance Plan.
Call it micro-managing, but some athletes find success by breaking down their performance into a series of executable steps. A Performance Plan collects these steps along with contingency plans for any and all possibilities that might arise in the course of the performance. Whether an informal checklist or a hundred page dossier, a Performance Plan can help athletes focus on the task(s) at hand. It can also break down an overwhelming obstacle into easily digestible stages.

Smart teachers use lesson plans.
Many a course has been undone by the rambling and meandering instructor, whose delivery of course materials suffers from a lack of organization and planning. It’s for this reason that 99.9%* of teachers proscribe to lesson plans to help structure their classroom time and make sure it’s productive for all involved. There are lots of resources out there on how to prepare a lesson plan. Just like Performance Plans, they can range from informal notes of things to cover scribbled on blank paper to elaborate blueprints to how your lesson should function. The important thing in either case is that your plan focuses on specific outcomes for your students.