In “Straight Talk with Rick and Jal,” Harvard University’s Jal Mehta and I examine the reforms and enthusiasms that permeate education. In a field full of buzzwords, our goal is simple: Tell the truth, in plain English, about what’s being proposed and what it means for students, teachers, and parents. We may be wrong and we will frequently disagree, but we’ll try to be candid and ensure that you don’t need a Ph.D. in eduspeak to understand us. Today’s topic is what it takes for teachers to be effective coaches.
—Rick

Rick: Jal, a while back, I wrote about how tough it is to referee youth sports today. After a ref no-showed for my kid’s soccer game, I was rousted out of a (very) long retirement. Trading my canvas dad chair for a referee’s whistle was tough, tougher than I remembered. It got me thinking about just how hard we’ve made it for those who are asked to referee our kids, in sports and in school.

There’s a frustrating asymmetry at work: When a referee does well, it goes unremarked. When they misstep, there are loud complaints. This is brutal, especially when you’re asked to make judgment calls in a hurry. This same dynamic holds in schools, where we’ve become less and less willing to support or defend the referees charged with enforcing expectations around behavior, attendance, or academics. Instead, the cheers tend to be reserved for the parents, activists, attorneys, and academics who crusade against “the system” while second-guessing calls from the sidelines.

After I penned that column, you observed that coaching is a much better role than refereeing because coaches are aligned with their players around shared goals and passions. That feels on point. I’d love to hear a bit more: To your mind, just what is it that makes refereeing so frustrating and coaching so rewarding. And what are the lessons for teaching and learning?

Jal: Coaching is the best. Nothing better than shedding the work attire, putting on some sneakers and a Celtics tee, and unleashing my theories of deeper learning on unsuspecting children. It has all the benefits of teaching with the added benefit that you get to see, in real time, whether your methods are working. And there is a little competition thrown in for good measure. As you say, you have a shared goal with the kids, which makes them eager to listen to you, and you also have a lot of opportunities to teach life lessons along the way. At its best, you are leading a little community, which can be one of the best parts of childhood and being a parent.

So, what’s in it for the refs? Constant punching bag, both sides angry with you—why would anyone want this role?

This weekend, we had a really good ref for my son’s middle school basketball game. Kid shuffles his feet. Whistle. Travel. Kid’s toe just barely on the out-of-bounds line. Whistle. Other way. Kid makes beautiful move to the basket but takes an extra step on the way in. Whistle. No basket. Kid runs into other kid, falls to the ground hard. Whistle, foul on the kid who fell down for bumping the other kid. No mercy. It doesn’t matter that you are the one who got knocked over. You weren’t in position; foul on you.

This referee was helping the enterprise of learning. She was consistent but exacting.

When you are the coach, it’s easy to overlook things that don’t quite meet standards because you want to celebrate the good. When, in practice, your team is really struggling to make a basket, and a kid makes a nice move, you want to say, “great job, Nico,” and maybe you ignore that there was an extra step on the way in. And we do that in our classrooms as well—we are taught to look for the good, to be asset-based, to celebrate what someone has done well rather than what they haven’t. But having an external referee forces us to confront what is actually happening. You can’t be wishful. You stepped on the line or you didn’t.

There can also be a nice relationship between coaching and refereeing. Reffing can enhance coaching—it gives you focus and feedback on what you need to do right. We have practice on Tuesday. You can be sure we will work on not shuffling our feet.

What do you think, Rick? Are there other important roles refs can play? And how might we instantiate this in schools?

Rick: You’ve got me thinking about two related points here.

First, I’ve been on the sideline of too many soccer or basketball games where that terrific referee would still be excoriated by irate parents. Even being right and competent won’t always quiet the loudmouths. Nobody cheers a good call, but there’s a nontrivial chance that some parents or coaches will shout their displeasure with a “bad” one—even when the ref is 100% right. That discourages the kind of firm, instructional refereeing that we should all want.

Second, I love your explication of how good referees empower good coaching. By calling out mistakes and disallowing shortcuts, the referees make it easier for coaches to accentuate the positive and offer guidance on how to do better. There’s a healthy yin and a yang. In schools, that refereeing role is one that administrators historically played. By making clear the consequences for misbehavior, irresponsibility, and missed classes, administrators made it easier for teachers to focus on being supportive and directive.

But, as we’ve seen with everything from grade inflation to classroom disorder, there’s less and less evidence that administrators feel empowered or inclined to play that role. This shift either throws all this responsibility onto teachers or, too often, means teachers just turn a blind eye and hand out higher grades—fearing the administration won’t have their back if parents get angry at their attempted refereeing.

When you strip the referees of their authority, it means that teachers are like coaches at a game where the referee never showed, trying to coach and referee at the same time—it’s tougher to play either role well. Jal, what can educators do about all this?

Jal: I think part of the key here is to bring it back to values. What are we teaching our kids when we helicopter parent? What are we teaching them when we go after referees? Life is about balance—you want to support your kid but not fight all their battles. It can sometimes be appropriate to advocate, but it is also important to step back and recognize when you are wrong. If we as adults can’t articulate our values and hold these tensions, there is no way we can expect children to do so.

Leagues can and should be clear about those values. One soccer program my kids were part of required the coaches to read to the parents before every game the purpose of the league and the zero tolerance policies for the questioning of officials. This rule shouldn’t have been necessary, but it is better for the league to make the values explicit than to leave it to individual referees to respond to noxious parents.

Coaches also have a huge role to play here. They set the tone and often the players, and to some degree the parents, follow their leads. It is difficult to coach youth sports. You want to be the calm, role-modeling adult, but you are also in a zero-sum competition which, speaking from personal experience, can lead to moments that are not one’s finest. One thing that has helped me balance those roles is having real conversations with the officials before the game. The more we see each other as human beings, the harder it is to dehumanize one another.

Finally, if we are going to be completely honest, referees also vary tremendously in skill and temperament. The best of them are accurate, consistent, fair, and realize that they are not the main attraction. The worst are capricious, inconsistent, defensive, and sometimes showboats. The more that everyone understands their roles—coaches should coach and not argue, parents should support and not coach, and referees should officiate but not try to star—the better the whole enterprise will work.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.