Coach Pickles' Jelly Bean Sports Salutes the Wiggles Hanging Up Their Colored Costumes
Today, Coach Pickles' Jelly Bean Sports salutes The Wiggles, Jeff Fatt (Purple Wiggle), Murray Cook (Red Wiggle) and Greg Page (Yellow Wiggle) and Anthony Field (Blue Wiggle) and their 21 years spent entertaining children around the world. I could only hope to be so fortunate to have the same experience one day. As I said in the New York Daily News article's comments; "these guys are true innovators that have inspired others like me who dare to commit to the field of teaching young children and especially, inspire those that don't accept mediocrity as a way of teaching."
I attribute my success and early beginnings in the field of children's sports edutainment to these guys. In January 2006, I was working on my doctorate at the time, and being trained as a part-time Youth Sports Instructor at a suburban Chicago park district. I watched my coworkers struggling to keep young children’s attention as they taught them sports. After class, I observed parents apologizing to us for their children’s misbehavior, and my frustrated coworkers complaining about how children don’t listen, follow directions, or focus.
To be fair, these high school and college students' sports teachings were not wrong; they did it the way we all, as children, had learned sports growing up. And of course, not many of us remember much before age 5 so nobody, including the children's parents, had anything to judge the quality or compare the introductory experience to. So why would anyone have reason to think there was anything wrong?
Obviously, there were serious problems with disconnect between the adults and the children in this environment. After a week of training and seeing the continued difficulty my coworkers were experiencing translating sports for young children; I couldn't stop saying to myself, "There has to be a better way." At the time, I was a 2005 University of Oklahoma, Masters of Human Relations graduate; and inside the problem I saw tremendous opportunity for improving the human relations of tot-sports. In the beginning, I had a hard time defining what "it" was. All I knew was young children were bored and unmotivated by ordinary introductory sports programs.
It was late 2006, The Wiggles were peaking in their popularity about this time. Still caught in my dilemma of thinking about how I could improve sports for young children, I had an idea. After much trial and error working with kids; I became inspired to buy tickets to a Wiggles concert. So what did I learn?
What the Wiggles taught me was that knowing what works and doesn’t work for young children often transcends our adult agendas. It requires thinking less like an adult and more like a performer.” The Wiggles educate and entertain in ways children can easily follow because they speak the language of children, one that is capable of keeping kids attention for over an hour straight. They understood how to translate simple and complex ideas to children and this was exactly what sports was missing. What might have been most inspiring was, as a someone trying to find hope in his idea, here were four grown guys who made a lifestyle out of creatively educating and entertaining millions of young children in fun ways that worked. I found my calling.
The Wiggles were, and still are today, an example of how to successfully work with (i.e. talk to, engage, and inspire) young children. I admit, it is hard to be creative and think with children in mind and create rich and robust learning experiences. But as I've also learned, it is much harder to accept the outcomes that come from playing the part of the responsible adult, barking orders at children who, regardless of how hard we try, do not buy into what we are saying or doing. Committing to the extra work it takes to entertain children in learning environments on the front-end is, as I am sure Jeff, Murray, Greg, and Anthony would tell you, it's well worth it.
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