Customer Reviews

You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned: John Wooden's Teaching Principles and Practices

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Swen Nater knows John Wooden - that much is clear. Clear too, is what a great teacher John Wooden was and, continues to be. This is a book any teacher can learn from. Sure it is great for coaches, but when a teacher is looking for guidance on how to handle varying student potential within their class, is it better to treat everyone the same - or to treat each individual differently, according to their personality, talent, ability, commitment etc. as Wooden did? Swen does a great job of interjecting his own life's experience into the priniciples Wooden taught. And he uses those of "Alcindor", Wicks, Walton, Allen and others to make the stories fit the lesson. This is textbook material, or should be required reading for aspiring or experienced teachers - 5 Stars plus!

Ron Gallimore and Swen Nater combine their incredible knowledge about teaching and basketball to deliver a new and insightful look at the teaching practice of John Wooden. The book is a wonderful balance of personal stories from Nater and insights about teaching and learning from Gallimore that demonstrate just how incredibly wise, intentional, and gifted The Coach was and is. This book demonstrates the hard work, preparation, courage, and commitment to continuous learning that defines quality teaching. A must read for every teacher and coach.

If you've read a lot of Coach Wooden's books, you may be familiar with his wisdom, maxims and his wonderful pyramid of success; this book studies the methodology of his teaching and how he applied his wisdom to the successful transfer of knowledge and skills. If you're a teacher, buy this book!

Any coach should take the philosophies of John Wooden to heart, they work! Using his teachings you can win games and the players have a heck of a lot better experience. After a dismal record in only my 2nd season fresh out of college I started researching his work, and applying it - only to have one losing season over the next 7. Started to get away from his teachings recently making my frustration levels go through the roof so bought this book as a refresher, it helped and recommend it to all coaches.

If you like education and sports, this book will score with you. It's a wonderful tale of a teacher/coach who knew how to reach his students/team. It drives home the fundamental idea that to inspire your students, you must know them. It also gives voice to the concern if your students aren't learning, you're not teaching.

The first problem with "You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned" is its classification. Does it belong in basketball? After all, it's about the teaching techniques of John Wooden, the greatest coach in college basketball history. Or maybe it goes into a teaching classification, since teaching is essentially the subject. Or, maybe it goes into the general nonfiction group, since anyone who has to teach something to someone else -- and that includes just about everyone in one form or another, including parents and employers -- might be interested

It goes here in basketball. And despite its small size and slight periods of redundancy, there are plenty of good lessons here to make this a worthwhile effort.

Wooden continues to fascinate us, even 31 years after he coached his last basketball game. His ex-players continue to call, write or visit in an effort to pick up wisdom on how to run their lives. A variety of books have been written about Wooden, who hasn't seem to lose any relevance despite advancing into his 90's.

Nater and Gallimore have a good perspective on Wooden's skill as a teacher. Nater was Wooden's greatest project, someone who never started a single game at UCLA but who was an eventual rookie of the year in the pros. Nater turned into a good pro center, quite a turnaround for someone who apparently was merely tall when he finished high school. Gallimore sat in on UCLA's practices during the 1974-75 season and took notes for a research project. The book becomes something of a merger between Nater's practical experiences and Gallimore's more theoretical angle (such as classifying Wooden's comments into a variety of categories -- positive, informational, etc.)

The chapters are broken into eight lessons from Wooden. The titles include: "They are all Different," "Failure to Prepare is Preparing to Fail" and "You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned." Nater and Gallimore do a good job of explaining how Wooden demonstrated those principles. Take the third example mentioned above. Wooden thought the job of the teacher/coach was to teach. If the student didn't learn the lesson, the teacher hadn't done his job. Simple but forgotten.

It would be easy to say that this book would fall into a rather small niche, of most interest to teachers. The basic points probably could be summed up in a good-sized magazine article, as this feels a little padded to get to 130 pages of text plus notes and index. (Obviously it would be difficult to get the entire picture across in such an article, but it might prove more accessible to the non-teaching audience.)

Still, the source material is terrific. There's an early lesson about correcting, and not criticizing, when trying to improve someone's actions. Wooden wouldn't tell a player he was worthless after a mistake; he'd tell him how to correct his mistake in order to improve. Simple stuff. But think about how that can be applied to everyday life.

If you can pick up a lesson like that from "You Haven't Taught Until They Have Learned," the $19.95 price tag will seem like a bargain. Nater has said that there aren't many ways for teachers to compare notes about techniques, and he was hoping to demonstrate some good methods of Wooden in the book. Sounds like a good idea to me.

Teachers and other administrators ought to add a star to this, and give it a look if they get the chance.

John Wooden is an amazing coach. he led UCLA for many successful years. So, while I haven't read this book yet, I am assuming it must be the most masterfully written book ever produced. It is going to be a smooth read, almost as smooth and a micheal jordan stride to the hoop and open mouthed slam dunk.