Cheer Coach - One of the Many Hats I Wear

We all know that teachers wear many different hats: teacher, parent, counselor, nurse, detective - and that's only naming a few! This year I added a new one: middle school cheer coach.

The previous cheer coach moved to a different school this year, so as a former cheerleader I thought I'd give it a shot. It's got to be more fun than teaching after school classes, right? Well, yes and no. 

Yes - because it's fun to cheer and watch the girls perfect things we've worked so hard on. I even had one of my old students from when I taught 3rd grade on the squad, so it was cool to see how much she had grown up! Not so much fun feeling like a fish out of water and like a first year teacher again!

Prior to taking this post, I searched Pinterest for hours trying to find a middle school cheer coach that posted their ideas and things they did with their cheerleaders. I mostly found coaches from competitive cheer, which isn't something my squad was going to do. I looked at some high school cheerleaders, but that was quite a bit too advanced for what my cheerleaders were going to be able to do. It was the first time some of them had been in dance lessons before, and the first time any of of them did stunts so it wasn't very helpful for me.

I needed someone who works in a K-8 school like I do, posting about how they run their program, or even someone who works in a middle school writing about what they do with their cheerleaders. I couldn't find anything like that, so if I'm missing out on something amazing please please please let me know in the comments!

Anyways, since I couldn't find what I was looking for, I decided that I would write a post about the things I learned as a first year cheer coach, how I managed my program, what changes I'll make next year, and fundraising ideas. My goal is for this to help someone who is in a position like I was!

Check back on February 6th for my next post: