Free skateboards lessons at Copelands for Peckham schools

 

We now have the opportunity to invite local schools to Copeland Park for a free taster class on a Friday afternoon.

With Skateboarding now a GCSE PE subject in Wales and Northern Ireland it’s only a matter of time before it comes to England, and we’re here to help local schools get ahead of the curve.

Pictured are girls from Sarah Bonnell School in West Ham performing some key learner skills, like rolling in the flat bank, and the fakie..

What does Skateboarding offer that traditional team sports don’t?

We know that skateboarding contributes to mental health & wellbeing, and builds life skills, including building resilience & creativity.

Yes, traditional sports build resilience too; try, try, and try again. But how is skateboarding different?

The trouble with traditional team sports is that mistakes are negative; mistakes mean letting the team down, and as a result we see a large number of students marginalised and living less active lives because they feel that “sport isn’t for them”.

Skateboarding and the ‘growth mindset’

When you give a child a skateboard, you are giving them a sandbox where it’s OK to make mistakes, in fact, we actively encourage them to make mistakes.

This is often referred to a ‘growth mindset’. Skateboarding teaches us that failure is a factor of learning, and therefore failure & success, and are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.

In skateboarding success is a relative measure

In skateboarding there is a concept of ‘war’; Jaws and the Lyon 25. The ‘war’ is an endeavour or trick that has may have taken hundreds of attempts, across numerous sessions, suffering several injuries, and taking all of the participant’s energy and dedication to succeed.

If you watch a group of skateboarders you will observe that it provides a space to participate where each success is celebrated relative to the ability of each participant. Participants see what other participants are trying, watch their struggle, and celebrate their success with them, often no matter how trivial the skill might seem from an objective standpoint, because they empathise with the struggle itself.

In skateboarding success is a bar we set for ourselves.

Please reach out if you’d like to discuss either coming to Copelands for a lesson, or if you’d like coaches to come to your school for after school clubs or one off events.