Richard Sparks

One of the most interesting chapters for me in Gallimore and Nater's You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned is the third chapter, "It's What You Learn After You Know It All That Counts the Most."   Given Wooden's great skill and knowledge, it was fascinating to read that right after taking the UCLA job […]

Early in his career (mostly in place with a few later adjustments by 1932), John Wooden developed his "Pyramid of Success" This was meant to be a guide to how one builds success–a road map, if you will, including not only short-term goals along the way, but character traits important to success. Remember Wooden's definition: […]

The next chapter of Gallimore and Nater's book is about success and is titled, "The Motivation to Learn Comes from Focusing on Reaching Your Own Potential." I'll deal with it in two parts, the second on Wooden's "Pyramid of Success."   But this post speaks to how we measure success, something incredibly important to us […]

We've met Ronald Gallimore in each of the previous posts. As you saw in the past few weeks, he continued his work studying John Wooden and his methods. But he then co-wrote a book (2010) with Swen Nater, a former player for Wooden at UCLA, You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned, and I can […]

Last week I addressed a number of John Wooden's ideas about pedagogy, taken from Gallimore and Tharp's 2004 article.   So now it's time to see what his pedagogical ideas can offer us as conductors. Part of the last post deals with our responsibility as teachers–is it our responsibility just to present material, or is […]

This will be a final two-part post based on Gallimore and Tharp's 2004 article, but not the last on what we can learn from John Wooden–he still has much more to teach us!   One of the sections in the article is titled, "Some Wooden Views on Pedagogy" (as always, read the article for yourself […]