On 11th and 12th January the many partners working together on the Erasmus+ SchoolJudo.EU project came together over the airwaves, brainstorming, planning, validating and learning towards common goals. Participants from the partner countries Italy, Hungary, Slovenia were joined by members of the IJF team and also the IJF Academy.
On day 1 there was much discussion around the production of a written set of practical guidelines to be used by the new coaches coming on board. These coaches will be called ‘Entertrainers,’ as they will be coaching via a set of perameters that focus on fun, on values and on experiential learning, explicitly delivering activities which are so much more than sport.
Day 2 of the meeting was particularly positive, with testimony from existing Entertrainers who teach value-led judo classes in schools in the Netherlands. There was an opportunity for new Entertrainers to ask questions and begin thinking about their first school classes and how to structure that all-important introduction to the sport.
The pilot schools, the Entertrainers and the Erasmus team have much to do before the debut classes take place in March in Hungary, Italy and Slovenia, but there is little doubt that this heavy planning phase is already paying dividends. Everyone is speaking the same language and that language is judo!