Audio Transcript

Published: 11 July 2017
APA 7 Citation: Newsome, B. (Host). (2017, July 11). Combining science, sport & leadership with the GWS Giants [Audio podcast transcript]. Fizzics Education. https://www.fizzicseducation.com.au/podcast/fizzicsed/combining-science-sport-leadership-with-the-gws-giants/

Ben Newsome CF is the recipient of the 2023 UTS Chancellor’s Award for Excellence and a Churchill Fellow. He is a global leader in science communication and the founder of Fizzics Education.

[00:00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed Podcast. For hundreds of ideas, free experiments and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. And now, here’s your host, Ben Newsome.

[00:00:17]
Ben Newsome: When you ask a student what do they think a major sports team actually does, they’ll inevitably tell you that it’s what happens out on the field. It’s all about the players. And often they’ll tell you, hey, they’re going to be a major sports star too. And that’s a great thing. However, I wonder how many kids realize just how much science is actually involved in a major sporting team. Our next guests certainly know a lot about this. They’re from the GWS Giants, which is a major sporting team in Western Sydney. In this interview, we get into all sorts of science, including how teams actually work with high-performance coaches and physiologists and psychologists to get the best out of their sports stars.

[00:00:56]
Ben Newsome: We also look at how it’s so important that major sports teams work directly with community groups and school groups to really get our youth into education. Plus, they also talk about their own experiences as classroom teachers prior to joining the GWS Giants.

[00:01:11]
Ben Newsome: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. My name is Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education and I’m really excited this week to bring you a bit of a different interview. It’s going to be the guys from the education outreach team of the GWS Giants. They are a major football team in Western Sydney. We speak a lot about science, but not just that. Also talking about how they work with kids to develop their leadership and aspirational goals. Lots to talk about here. I really enjoy it and I hope you enjoy it too. We were actually recording this in their boardroom in Sydney Olympic Park, which is certainly quite special for us. I live in Western Sydney and I was like, wow, I’m in the sporting team’s main head office effectively. And so, ladies and gentlemen, meet Gavin Robertson, Emad Elkheir, and Ali Faraj from the GWS Giants.

[00:01:54]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Why don’t you book us for a science show or workshop in your school? We love seeing students get excited about science, and you will too. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au and click on schools for more info.

[00:02:10]
Ben Newsome: Welcome Gavin, Emad to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:02:13]
Gavin Robertson: How are you? Thanks for having us.

[00:02:14]
Emad Elkheir: Good day, guys.

[00:02:15]
Ben Newsome: I’m well, thanks actually. And thanks very much for the coffee. The cafe here is fantastic. If anyone’s ever not been here, you really should go visit.

[00:02:22]
Gavin Robertson: Well, it’s a dominant part of the design here at Giants headquarters because the cafe and the food area that you would have gone to is in between both the administration and the football. So every day the football, be it the players and the coaches, and the administration, they eat together and come together. So not many clubs do that in this country.

[00:02:42]
Ben Newsome: For want of a, it’s not quite a dad joke, but certainly a melting pot of just stuff happening all in that space.

[00:02:47]
Gavin Robertson: Yeah, yeah, it is good. It makes us a far more interactive club because we’re a new club, and we need to get to know each other and our culture pretty quickly.

[00:02:55]
Ben Newsome: Actually, that brings up the point. So there’ll be listeners in Australia who know full well who the GWS Giants are, but as podcasts are, they’re global. So who are the GWS Giants? What do you guys do, for the people who have got no idea?

[00:03:08]
Emad Elkheir: Well, Gavin’s one of the first employees, so I’ll get him to give us a bit of a background on how the club was established and where we are now.

[00:03:15]
Gavin Robertson: Yeah, well, my previous life was a cricketer. I played cricket for Australia and New South Wales, and I did a lot of work in Western Sydney. The AFL came to me with regard to the work or the knowledge I had in Western Sydney from a commercial perspective, plus I’ve got a radio show that goes throughout all of New South Wales and all of the Gold Coast. And the AFL were going to start two teams there. So I was a perfect fit in a way, but I saw it as a great opportunity once I heard the ideas, that it was all bound around legacy, around sport, health, harmony, education, and employment. And it hasn’t been a wrong move because it’s really about being involved, kids running around, being healthy, and playing the game. The more people playing the game, the better. It’s not always about the team.

[00:04:00]
Gavin Robertson: The thing that the AFL does and the Giants do is very much focus on us playing very well, training hard, and then going into the weekend and playing for our community. And then hopefully our community enjoy the day, go home, sit at the dinner table, and maybe talk about us for four or five minutes. And then that’s how we connect.

[00:04:22]
Ben Newsome: I can tell you that you definitely connect because I live in Western Sydney. I see kids walking around in Giants shirts around Blacktown Westpoint shopping centre, which we certainly do a lot of work in Western Sydney schools and they know who you guys are. They really do. And a lot of that work has come from Emad and Ali in the engagement team.

[00:04:38]
Emad Elkheir: Wasn’t always the case, Ben. I guess, going back when we first started the campaign about GWS Giants, we still actually cop that. Where are you guys from? And we say we’re from the Giants. So are you a basketball team? Are you a soccer team? So we still get that.

[00:04:55]
Ben Newsome: I had a kid yesterday, we were doing a program because we’ve been working with the Giants for several years on doing some science and education with the Giants at schools. And I asked, who are the Giants? And a kid in year one stood up and went, they’re really big people who crush things when they stand on them. Yes, they are!

[00:05:15]
Emad Elkheir: We crush opponents these days, not anyone else.

[00:05:19]
Gavin Robertson: The GWS part was the first time the acronym had ever become serious. It was never really a part of business or the business sector in Western Sydney. And we are the Greater Western Sydney Giants, but we’ve probably moved, our fans now really just call us the Giants per se. But I think about where we started, and you’ve got to remember that not only the players but the fans went through two or three years of being completely dominated by other teams. And being able to come to games and then walk home having lost most of them, it’s not easy. But it builds a huge part of your culture and your resolve.

[00:05:58]
Ben Newsome: And this is one of the things that really attracted me to working with the Giants in the first place. So we’ve been working with Emad and Ali in the engagement side of things with schools about teaching science and leadership and aspirational skills altogether in workshops. And the community work is outstanding. Actually, Emad, do you want to point out just some of the stuff that you guys have been doing?

[00:06:17]
Emad Elkheir: So recently we launched our Giants Care initiative, which is a corporately sponsored initiative that allows the club to go out to, last year was over 10,000 students in Western Sydney to deliver a whole range of community programs and school programs. This year we will see over 12,000 to 13,000 students participating in our programs. Programs vary from science programs with Fizzics Education. So this year we’re running a Giants Buzz and a Giants Pressure and a Giant Moves, all targeted at students from kinder all the way to year six. We do a Youth Eco Summit with a few other partners as well, in super education and Fizzics. We also…

[00:07:01]
Ben Newsome: You’re probably wondering what the creaking is. We’ve got Ali sneaking into the background here, just with a big smile on his face. Ali, you probably should say good day now you’ve walked your way in.

[00:07:11]
Ali Faraj: Hey guys, how are you?

[00:07:13]
Emad Elkheir: We like to do things informally over here. So…

[00:07:16]
Gavin Robertson: It’s just the nature of Western Sydney, the nature of the club is it’s inviting. We’re a really inviting… things aren’t really done formally, as Ben mentioned in the cafe, things are really easy here, which is good.

[00:07:30]
Ben Newsome: And that’s actually it. People don’t realize that the GWS Giants really have a stunning not just reach, but really genuinely care about education. There’s a steering committee around education which has been running for quite a while. Actually, Ali, seeing you’ve joined us, you might as well let people know what that’s been about.

[00:07:47]
Ali Faraj: Yeah, look, we’ve got a community advisory group. We’ve got a passion to provide unique educational experiences for, I guess, kids from Western Sydney, especially kids who come from a bit of a disadvantaged background, can’t necessarily afford excursions or incursions. So we look at offering them a service where we’ll cover the costs and subsidize the costs for these kids not to miss out on. When I was growing up, I used to miss out because we had a family of five and it was pretty expensive to get everyone to participate in the excursion.

[00:08:17]
Ben Newsome: So if I was a primary school teacher and I was thinking, right, I know I’ve got kids I want to teach PDHPE, I want them learning about healthy living and all that type of stuff, and I’ve also got my science outcomes I’ve got to get through. I guess what sort of stuff are you guys doing that can help, at least on the primary school level, to work with healthy living and nutrition and stuff.

[00:08:37]
Emad Elkheir: So like I was mentioning earlier, we’ve got three fabulous programs. Everything’s obviously linked back to the curriculum and to the syllabus. We have our Giant Moves targeted at kindergarten to year two. Obviously, Ben knows a bit more about it. I’m going off me, so you’re talking to a non-science person, but can still obviously tell you how important it is. We teach the kids about movement, so push, pull, and those sort of things at a very young age, which is really good. Again, targeted at year three to six, we have two programs again from the syllabus perspective, around electricity and around pressure. And the feedback has been fabulous. They’ve been developed recently due to such a popular intake from our previous programs.

[00:09:24]
Ben Newsome: I even think about your other work you do with some of your sponsors through Giants Care. For instance, the cook-offs you guys did, wasn’t that a good thing to describe around nutrition?

[00:09:34]
Gavin Robertson: I think the fact that the kids get together and work as a team, and then they make a meal, and they’re really well advised from leading chefs in the industry, and they know what they’re doing. And then they create a meal and then we create a competition where they’re actually judged, and it’s like a MasterChef type of thing. But they get judged and they look forward to winning. But it’s more, in the end, they learn that they worked together on something and they actually got an outcome, and it was really enjoyable. It was more than edible, it was nice. And I think that they learn things about what is in food. Why those types of foods are good for you.

[00:10:12]
Gavin Robertson: Because like what Ali was talking about before, how we grew up, myself and Emad and Ali, we sort of grew up in an environment where you got to eat whatever you could get. For me, it was like there was a packet of chips and a can of Coke, I’d be eating that at lunchtime because sometimes that’s all I had or that’s all mum could afford. Where by kids learning about food and its nutrition benefits, and then off the back of that from a sporting perspective, health, they get those two things right going forward. Their mind and their way of thinking, the framework is in a much better place.

[00:10:49]
Ben Newsome: The beauty about it is, as you could imagine, kids are going to identify more with footy stars than any science expert, always, at all times. And so I often think about some of the work that you guys do with the marginalized groups, especially in early high school, some of the stuff you’ve been doing with Rooty Hill and so on.

[00:11:06]
Ben Newsome: Maybe go into what sort of stuff just as a high school teacher, what sort of things can we be involved with with the Giants that really could get the kids back into learning, not just science, but genuinely just engaging back with their school?

[00:11:21]
Ali Faraj: Well, I guess our two main programs when we first initiated this educational sort of suite of programs was our Stand Tall and our goal setting program. And pretty much our dedication to success was about encouraging young kids to have an aspiration to get somewhere one day and not facing away from the reality, life’s tough and for some people it’s tougher for them than others. But what we really care about is how do you reflect on your day today and say, you know what, I want to make a bit of a change today in small steps. And we’re not magicians. Our words aren’t a spell to get your life back on track straight away. But we share our story. And I share a story with the kids about failing a subject every semester at university.

[00:12:01]
Ali Faraj: And for the sheer fact then they say to me, ‘How’d you become a teacher?’ And I said to them, ‘The university that I graduated first up said, no, I couldn’t get into the university to do teaching because my score at my degree was too low.’ And I said to them, you can’t tell me what I can and can’t do. If I’ve got a goal and aspiration I want to do it, then I’m going to go chase that. So I went to Newcastle University, and I live in Auburn, and so it’s a three-hour trip. And then I said to the kids, but if I was to give in to what I wanted to achieve, then I would have just become something else.

[00:12:45]
Ali Faraj: And sometimes what we tend to do is we look for the easy options. The easy option is to say, my dad’s a plumber, I’ll just become a plumber. Nothing wrong with becoming a plumber, but if that’s not your passion, don’t feel forced to do it. Look at something that you really want to do and you’re passionate about, and do it. Because the last thing you want to be doing is studying something that you don’t like or being in a job that you don’t like, because you’re going to hate every day.

[00:13:07]
Ben Newsome: This really reminds me of a collaboration that we did with the Giants with Sydney Olympic Park and Macquarie University, which was that program we did a couple of years ago, Leadership, it’s not Rocket Science, because we had to get a pun in there. But this was a bit of fun because we connected with kids in Casino in Northern New South Wales, in Western Sydney, and it was from Rooty Hill, and that was your Indigenous Academy as well, wasn’t it?

[00:13:28]
Emad Elkheir: Correct, yes.

[00:13:29]
Ben Newsome: And that was over five weeks where we ran video conferencing science education programs where, yes, they came in and did science stuff, but it went beyond that. It was about learning to be leaders in community.

[00:13:41]
Emad Elkheir: Yeah, that’s correct. And it really worked well because at the same time we’re getting young Aboriginal kids to connect with another place and another people, and share their story about their place and community. But at the same time, Ben, you remember when we did the experiment, we would reflect on characteristics of a leader or characteristics of the experiment that comes back to leadership. And if you remember the egg…

[00:14:08]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, the egg drop challenge.

[00:14:10]
Emad Elkheir: And we talked about the hardness of the shell.

[00:14:13]
Ben Newsome: Yep.

[00:14:14]
Emad Elkheir: And not cracking. And sometimes we insulate all our problems, we don’t let it come out, we don’t share, we don’t seek support. We feel a bit embarrassed. But sometimes you just got to let it splat.

[00:14:25]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I suppose actually using these experiments as analogies for other things certainly grabs kids’ attention, especially for the kids who genuinely just didn’t care about the science. They just wanted to do other stuff.

[00:14:36]
Emad Elkheir: Not only that, what we find obviously working with young people is that sometimes they think, or if they haven’t seen something, for instance, a football player, they think that that person’s on a different level. A lot of the students that we bring into the club, they’ll meet one of the players and they’ll be, oh, is he playing on the TV on the weekend? Like, yeah, he’s a full-time player. Whether it’s the captain, Callan Ward, coming in and being a guest judge, or it’s coach Leon Cameron coming in, and the kids, they sort of taken back because they think, but he’s a famous person. How’s he just interacting with us normally? And from our perspective, it’s about showing kids that you can become anything. That they are just normal people and they were young like you were. And a lot of them were disadvantaged like you were and didn’t have the opportunities, but they created those opportunities. So how can you as a young person create those opportunities?

[00:15:26]
Gavin Robertson: I think we’re now dealing with the new drug and that is the internet and social media and opinion. And when we were growing up we didn’t have to deal with that, but I look at young people now and they are so judged from an array of different people, angles, administrations, it’s difficult. And I think with the leadership aspects, we try and clean that up and try and get people back to understanding themselves, understanding family, and understanding community. And the more you can care for those things, the more within your life that is shared. And I think that we can move kids away from being insular and being more group orientated and more help orientated because it’s the give and you will receive. It’s a very old adage, sorry, but we’re in a difficult time right now in community or society.

[00:16:24]
Ben Newsome: Very true. And actually, what Emad was just saying about they think it’s just the guys running around on the field. Now, clearly that’s the heart of the club, we get that. But I mean, we’re sitting here in the boardroom at the GWS Giants, but we’re surrounded not just by players, but there’s accountants, physiotherapists, nutritionists. Tell us a bit about just the buzz that goes on on a day-to-day basis around this place.

[00:16:45]
Gavin Robertson: Well, the buzz has gone up a gear, and it went up a gear because we were a team that the first three or four years we were trying to survive. We had very good people like Kevin Sheedy who said, what if, imagine if we just won one quarter. Not a whole game, but what if we won one quarter as 19-year-old kids, one year out of high school, and we beat one quarter against Geelong or Hawthorn or somebody who’s one of the top teams in the country. That’s achievement. And that’s where we started.

[00:17:15]
Gavin Robertson: And then we’ve been getting better and better. And then we had two really important things happen. We had the Giants netball team come into the club, and then we had the Giants women’s team come in. And for me, it turned the place into more than a club. It was almost like a small city. And the girls here change the dynamic. Their involvement in the club, their involvement in people who work here, their interest in you as a person makes them interesting straight away. And we have a broadened community here of not just an AFL men’s team, but the AFL women’s team are astonishing. Their energy levels are through the roof, as is the Giants women’s team in netball. And I don’t think we could have ever imagined ourselves being a part of something that’s not really been done before in Australian sport.

[00:18:08]
Ben Newsome: Speaking of which, there’s one of the highlights of the calendar, I must say, for us, we were just talking about this before we started the recording, you guys have a fantastic iftar celebration. I just wanted to let the listeners, especially in the schools, understand how this is not just a shallow reach into the community. You genuinely really are about community. Tell us about the iftar.

[00:18:31]
Emad Elkheir: So the iftar is obviously, for those that aren’t aware, there’s a month in the Islamic calendar called Ramadan where Muslims fast for a month. So from sunrise to sunset, we don’t eat anything, basically. And every night we feast to break our fast, and part of the culture and religion is how do you share that meal? So the club, and AFL as a whole organization, took on the initiative of how can we bring people together? How can we use sport, especially AFL, as a vehicle to bring people together? So we do hold an iftar dinner that gets about 250 guests from a range of different backgrounds and religions and nationalities. And that’s what the club’s about.

[00:19:15]
Emad Elkheir: We always say, how can the outside community reflect who we are, and we try to show that. So we have so many different organizations, and so many different community workers, and teachers, and schools, and it opens up the doors for everyone to be involved with a football club. Because sometimes, like I was saying earlier, we get that perception, oh, it’s a football club, I can’t go there, I can’t be involved. But no, we really do have those doors open. Come be involved, come have a coffee in the cafe, come be involved in some of our programs. And it’s not only that, we also cater for the Indian community, we do a lot with the African community, we do a lot with disadvantaged communities. So it really is open to everyone. Anyone that wants to get involved, we always find a way to get them involved.

[00:20:04]
Gavin Robertson: Well, last year we had the marquee set up, but we also had, on either side, a dozen different types of foods from different nationalities. And that was astonishing. I thought that was, where you can be one end eating African food, the other end you’re eating Turkish food, in the middle you’re eating Indian food. It was, I think it’s interesting that we’re a broadened sense of how we think.

[00:20:34]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, and the kids themselves open up to this too.

[00:20:36]
Emad Elkheir: It is, and so many people are involved. You’ve got everyone from Diabetes New South Wales there through to Oxford Education, you’ve got so many people involved in this place. It’s stunning.

[00:20:45]
Ben Newsome: Now, just sort of thinking, I’m sitting with some people heavily involved with the GWS Giants, but also people who have taught in classrooms. So I’m just purely out of interest, what are some of the best things that you’ve seen happen for teaching in a classroom, whether it’s primary or secondary? Just moments where you’ve gone, you know what, this just grabs the kids’ attention. My gosh. Especially around the science area, but even just broadly, nutrition, health, what sort of things just seem to shine?

[00:21:12]
Ali Faraj: Look, my favourite experiment, being a primary school teacher, and teaching year three, and year five, and year six, was always around electricity. And bringing the lemons in, and then telling kids, can we generate enough electricity out of lemons to turn on a light bulb? Can we?

[00:21:33]
Emad Elkheir: Why didn’t you actually ask if they had seen the Giant Buzz show a few times? So I’ll be interested to see if Ali actually knows the answer.

[00:21:39]
Ali Faraj: Yes you can. You can! The beauty about it is how do you get into a pedagogy where you’re letting kids explore? And it’s not about the teacher stepping back, but it’s about the teacher becoming a facilitator and a coach, rather than a dictator. And rather than sitting at the front of the classroom, giving them a sheet about electricity and getting them to write it down. But how do you get kids to start exploring? How do you get them to start to become, I guess, people of questions? Why would he give us a lemon? Can it generate enough electricity? What is in a lemon to give you electricity? And then for them to find a resolution for themselves and come back to you and discuss it. And the beauty about it was one person’s answer was different to the other.

[00:22:23]
Ben Newsome: Totally.

[00:22:24]
Ali Faraj: And that’s what science as a KLA gives you an opportunity to do that.

[00:22:29]
Ben Newsome: Actually, this is exactly what Isobel Kingsley said from the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. For those people, the museum used to be called Powerhouse Museum. That’s exactly what she said a few episodes ago, about be a facilitator, not a, who was it, a dictator? You don’t want to be that.

[00:22:45]
Emad Elkheir: But that’s what Fizzics Education, I’m going to give Ben a bit of a plug, his team do a fabulous job in doing that. Just the way that you guys facilitate your programs, and that’s why we obviously jumped on board with you guys. But the feedback that comes back from the schools, we’re talking about schools that obviously are already teaching that stuff, but the way that it’s taught is absolutely fabulous. And that’s why us as a club love jumping on board with that because we see the outcomes that it has to those schools, to those disadvantaged schools that can’t afford maybe to bring in a science provider, that can’t afford to buy the equipment to run a science experiment, that don’t have the facilities. So having partners like Fizzics Education on board doing that for us is huge for the club.

[00:23:34]
Gavin Robertson: I think we’ve an ability, I’ve been in a few classrooms, not as many as Emad and Ali, but I’ve walked into some noisy classrooms and by the end of it, they’re quiet. And I think it’s a real compliment to the team with regard to how they do their work. They find ways of getting the kids interested. And immediately they themselves become interesting. And I think it’s an adage for life. I think as Ali was speaking about before about passions, find out what you are interested in. Because it’s never really worked from there on.

[00:24:08]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that’s true. I mean, anytime anyone’s ever been in classrooms for more than a week or so, eventually there comes a point where it just completely goes pear-shaped. Now this is something I often bring up in these discussions because I’m always, almost perversely interested, but I always feel that you grow more from failure than you do from success. And that’s exactly what Ali was kind of talking about. And so I guess as early, we may have some people here who are brand new into teaching, just got out of university, or maybe they’re not teachers, they’re in a museum, there’s this new science communicator. And you’re watching people who just seem to just have it, it’s just too easy for them. But behind the scenes, they’ve gone through bits where things have just not gone right. So I’m just interested, have you ever had experiences in the classroom where you’ve just gone, you know what, I know where this is going and what am I going to do about it next?

[00:24:56]
Ali Faraj: Oh, we’ve had plenty of experiments that have failed. Does it ever stop you not failing? No, it doesn’t. You just fail better. Then again, it’s the passion that drives you. And to be honest with you, a lot of people turn around and say, ‘Oh, why are teachers complaining about pay? They get 12 weeks off in the year and this that.’ But I remember and I show a lot of respect to teachers because I say it’s exactly the same level as a doctor because you’re actually teaching young people how to read and write and count, and explore things. You’re at a profession that you’re actually teaching someone the most crucial things in life. But the respect for teaching as well is I remember I used to go to school at 7:00 in the morning and I never used to leave till 7:00 at night. Why? Because you had that passion of being interesting to the students tomorrow.

[00:25:48]
Ben Newsome: I guarantee there’d be listeners who’d know the exact same thing. I mean, they say you’re on holidays, but they know full well that a week prior to starting, you’re lesson planning, you’re dealing with stuff. And by the way, we really are sitting in the Giants boardroom. Just outside the window we’ve got, I don’t know, that’s not a line marker, it’s something going past to cut up the grass.

[00:26:05]
Ali Faraj: Yeah, edge cutter there.

[00:26:07]
Emad Elkheir: And we’ve got the line marker out as well.

[00:26:09]
Ben Newsome: Yeah, I mean it is. We’re right in the season. Actually, just hey, we’re at the Giants, might as well ask. How are you guys going? At this point in, what is it, May the 11th of May, 2017. Of course, when you listen to this, it’ll be later on.

[00:26:21]
Gavin Robertson: Well, right now, there’s a bunch of scientists about 30 meters to the right of us and they’re called physiotherapists. And they’re trying to get eight or nine players back on the field. We’ve had probably a bigger injury start to this season than we’ve had before. So, like all things, it’s important that the role the physiotherapist team or the medical team plays is key to how any team sport goes throughout an entire year.

[00:26:38]
Gavin Robertson: You’ve got to manage your list well, you’ve got to have a bit of luck with injury. But all of those smarts come into getting players back on the field earlier. We’re five and two at the moment. That’s not a bad start.

[00:27:01]
Ben Newsome: That’s a great start. And actually, what you were just saying then about physiotherapists, I mean, anyone who’s worked in physiotherapy, we actually got a couple of staff who’ve gone through that. They’re just finishing off their degrees right now. The research is ongoing. I’d imagine that some of those would be working directly with universities?

[00:27:15]
Ali Faraj: Yeah, we’ve got a couple of PhD students at the moment in the football department studying different things that are key to the club. And then again, that research will be based on performance, based on the athletes that we have here, and the continuous development of where the side will go from an athletic performance perspective. We’ve got one of the best leaders in the sport with high performance, we’ve David Joyce. And I guess we take our core business is footy, but every other part of the business is as crucial as a person that runs onto the field.

[00:27:49]
Ben Newsome: Oh, that’s awesome. Look, thanks very much, guys, for popping in. I really respect your time for popping in here because you guys are flat out, especially early in the season, you’ve got stuff to do. But of course, there’d be schools and teachers wanting to connect with you guys and beyond for all we know. So how could an educator get in touch and start getting involved more with the GWS Giants?

[00:28:10]
Emad Elkheir: The best way to do that is obviously we have our website. And all our community programs fall under the Giants Care initiative. So if you jump onto our website, gwsgiants.com.au, and find the Giants Care link. We’ll have heaps of our past programs and programs we’re doing at the moment. And there’ll be a link there to our phone number or email, ask for Emad Elkheir, or Ali Faraj, or Gav Robertson, or Ashley Crossan. And I’m sure one of us will be able to assist you guys in whatever way.

[00:28:43]
Ali Faraj: What we might do as well as part of the podcast, we’ll give you an email that we can put on and if you contact him directly, then we’ll sure will offer you a program in your school.

[00:28:54]
Ben Newsome: No worries. And what we’ll do, we’ll put those all in the show notes as well, so that you can definitely get those. And I really do, I encourage everyone to just think broadly that science isn’t just in a lab. It’s happening everywhere. It’s around you. And yeah, just I seriously, check out the Giants, what they’re getting up to. And if you’re in another country, maybe approach your own sporting team nearby that you’re into and say, hey, why don’t you copy what the Giants Care initiatives are all about. Well done, guys. Thanks very much for joining us.

[00:29:20]
Ali Faraj: Thank you very much, Ben. Thank you.

[00:29:22]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re all about science, ed tech, and more. To see 100 fun free experiments you can do with your class, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelt F I Z Z I C S. And click 100 free experiments.

[00:29:40]
Ben Newsome: And there we go. That was Gavin Robertson, Emad Elkheir, and Ali Faraj from the GWS Giants. That was quite a different interview, but certainly loved it all the same. I mean, these guys have a real passion for how kids learn and engage with their community, and it really shines through. They are not just about getting a football team out onto the field. They really aren’t. And I can tell you, the amount of work they do with their community is stunning. And look, there’s quite a few things we could have taken away from that interview. I certainly did. I was writing different ideas down as I was listening to that interview myself. And I’m sure there’s some things that you can be looking at yourselves in your own education environments. Now, one of the things that certainly grabbed my attention was careers.

[00:30:22]
Ben Newsome: How are you teaching kids about how they can do science in all types of industries? We need to be taking as many opportunities when it comes to students to show that careers in science exist in so many industries. Manufacturing, shipping, cosmetics, the food industry, it doesn’t matter. There’s always a scientist, a technologist, an engineer, someone developing the programs and products and things that makes things tick, and not just develop them, improve them and test them, and make sure they do what the claims actually are. It’s really important. And in this case, the Giants very much work with scientists when it comes to getting their athletes to recover after a major game.

[00:31:20]
Ben Newsome: Making sure that their training is as effectively as possible, and not doing it too low, or too high, not having a high impact or a low impact on their athletes, getting them at the optimum level, because that’s exactly what happens when it comes to elite sport. So certainly, show your kids as many different ways that scientists can actually work.

[00:32:06]
Ben Newsome: Another thing I took away was well, try and teach in a way that kids are actually interested in. I mean, it seems almost obvious when it comes down to it, but if the kids love sport, well, try and twist some of your teaching around sport. Is there an opportunity to learn from people who actually do this for a living? Invite a physiotherapist in, invite a sports scientist in, and find out what they actually do on a daily basis to get people back on the field, if they’re a sports person, find out what they do when it comes to injury management, find out what they do for peak performance management. There are so many things that they could be bringing in. And look, students would love it, especially when it comes from the people who actually do this on a daily basis.

[00:32:53]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Love your science? We do too. Here’s this episode’s education tip of the week. Grab your pencil, and get ready to make some notes.

[00:33:04]
Ben Newsome: So here’s another idea that you could be using to teach all your different topics in your classroom and help reach all the students who are sitting in your classroom. This week, I’d like you to have a think about who might be colour blind in your classroom. Now, I’m actually colour blind. I am mildly red-green colour blind. And I remember when I was a kid, kids would often hold up different coloured pencils and say, what colour’s this? What colour’s this? And I’d inevitably say, that’s a red one, that’s a green one, that’s a blue one, that’s a yellow one. But the thing is, when it comes to people who are colour blind, and I know there’ll be some people listening who know full well this, is that we see the world slightly differently. Certain mixes of colours are difficult to differentiate. It’s really hard to work out what is what.

[00:33:48]
Ben Newsome: Think of it from a child who’s colour blind in your classroom. Can they see everything that’s actually happening? I mean, the extreme example is writing with a light pink chalk on a light green blackboard. I know that when I used to sit at the back of the class, I really couldn’t see what the teacher was writing. And annoyingly for the teacher, I didn’t tell them. I would sit at the back and go, yep, yep, sure, I totally get what you’re saying, and try and sort it out myself, to my own detriment.

[00:34:15]
Ben Newsome: Think of your students and the way you’re designing your experiments. I mean, I’ll give you an actual genuine example when it comes to science teaching. When I was in high school, we had to run chemical titrations with a methyl red indicator. Now, for the normal colour vision student, this is not an issue. However, for me, I couldn’t really see the distinct change between red to orange to yellow in the different pH solutions. What this means is I would completely miss the endpoint of my titration. So that means that my volumes are completely out and then I’ve got no idea about how much of a particular chemical I actually had. Now, it doesn’t seem like a major issue in high school. However, the exact same experiment was done in university with a chemistry practical exam. And that is really a bit of an issue that I couldn’t see the endpoint in my titration.

[00:35:00]
Ben Newsome: Just think about how you are structuring your lessons from a PowerPoint and animations and written word point of view, or the actual experiments that the kids are doing. Just make sure that kids can actually see what’s going on.

[00:35:15]
Announcer: This is the Fizzics Ed podcast. We’re excited about science. Grab a copy of our new book, Be Amazing: How to Teach Science the Way Primary Kids Love, from our website. Just search Be Amazing book. It’s available in hard copy and ebook. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelt F I Z Z I C S.

[00:35:36]
Ben Newsome: One of the things that becomes really apparent when you speak with the guys from the GWS Giants is how much they care about teaching kids to deal with adversity. And last episode, Karen Player from the Australian Museum certainly had a bit of an issue when it came to teaching kids in a video conference. Well, take a listen.

[00:35:55]
Karen Player: Halfway through I think the second one, we got someone come up and just say the entire network is about to shut down at the Australian Museum. We have a flood in the server room. So luckily I had a couple of moments warning and I was able to let the people that we were participating with at the time saying, I think in a few moments we’re going to be disconnected. This is why we’ll reschedule. And sure enough, five minutes later everything went off. So we did have a heads up, but that’s one of the things, completely a technical issue completely outside the realms of anything we could do.

[00:36:29]
Ben Newsome: Oh boy, that would be a serious problem. And you can imagine there how that would have felt when you’re trying to teach multiple classes a program on natural history across New South Wales, and your server room’s about to get flooded. Look, Karen Player had a lot to speak with in our last episode and you really should check it out. She’s a fantastic friend, and also a brilliant educator who’s been working for 20 years in the Australian Museum, Australia’s oldest museum filled with a whole bunch of natural history objects. And she’s worked at front of house, back of house, as well as teaching all over Australia and beyond via video conference. And if you haven’t already, I’d definitely recommend you check it out.

[00:37:07]
Announcer: Thanks for listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast. Sign up now for our fortnightly email newsletter. It’s loaded with details on new experiments you can do, STEM teaching articles, new gadgets, exclusive offers and upcoming events. Go to fizzicseducation.com.au. Scroll to the bottom and add your email.

[00:37:26]
Ben Newsome: And that just about brings us to the end of yet another Fizzics Ed podcast. Hey, jump on the website, there are so many free things that’ll help you teach science in the way that kids will actually care about. Look, there really is, there’s over 150 free experiments. I mean, they’re really just adding up. There’s over 160 teaching articles. So it’s just, well, I’d suggest probably just jump on the search box and type in things. There’s so many things that can certainly help you. And if something’s not there, hey, throw us a line, let us know you’d like something written up, and we certainly will go about doing it. And speaking of helping out… Next week we are catching up with Mandi Dimitriadis from Makers Empire. Makers Empire is a fantastic company who hails out of Adelaide, but now operates in Australia, USA, and China, teaching kids design thinking through 3D printing. I know you’ll get a lot out of it. And as always, may your science lessons be as fun and as informative as possible, and please make sure they grab your students’ imagination. My name is Ben Newsome from Fizzics Education, and you’ve been listening to the Fizzics Ed podcast.

[00:38:28]
Announcer: You’ve been listening to another Fizzics Ed Podcast. We’re excited about science. Subscribe to us on iTunes to download the next episode as soon as it’s released. And don’t forget, for hundreds of ideas, free experiments, our new Be Amazing book and more, go to fizzicseducation.com.au. That’s physics spelled F I Z Z I C S.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do professional sports teams like the GWS Giants contribute to education?
Professional sports teams often use their public platform and the influence of their players to engage students in learning. The GWS Giants, for example, run community initiatives like Giants Care, which delivers programs focusing on STEM, healthy living, and leadership to thousands of students, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds who might otherwise miss out on unique educational excursions.

2. Why is it beneficial to use sports figures to teach science and life skills?
Students often identify more strongly with athletes than with traditional academic experts. When high-profile players participate in science experiments or share personal stories of overcoming adversity, it breaks down barriers. It shows students that these role models are normal people who have faced challenges, making the educational and inspirational messages much more relatable and impactful.

3. What types of science concepts are integrated into the GWS Giants’ school programs?
The programs are specifically linked to the school curriculum and cover a variety of scientific topics. For early primary students, they focus on basic physics like push and pull movements. For older students, programs delve into electricity, pressure, and the science of nutrition and healthy eating. Furthermore, the club’s daily operations highlight the science behind high-performance sports, including physiotherapy and sports medicine.

4. How does the club teach students about goal setting and resilience?
Educators and players from the club share their authentic stories of failure and setbacks—such as failing university subjects or facing career roadblocks—to teach students that adversity is a normal part of life. By using analogies like the “egg drop challenge” to discuss emotional resilience, they encourage young people not to insulate their problems, but to seek support and pursue their true passions rather than settling for the “easy option.”

5. What role do sports scientists and medical staff play in a major sporting team?
A major sporting team relies heavily on a dedicated team of physiotherapists, sports scientists, nutritionists, and doctors to manage player health and performance. These professionals use scientific data to optimize training loads, accelerate injury recovery, and ensure athletes perform at their peak without sustaining preventable high-impact injuries. It demonstrates that the sports industry is deeply rooted in science and technology.

Extra thought ideas to consider

The Intersection of Sports and STEM Careers
While many children dream of becoming professional athletes, the reality is that the sports industry offers numerous behind-the-scenes STEM career pathways. Educators could explore ways to highlight roles like sports psychology, physiotherapy, dietetics, and biomechanics. This approach can be incredibly effective in keeping sports-loving students engaged in science by showing them alternative routes into the industry they are passionate about.

Using Science Analogies to Teach Emotional Intelligence
The conversation highlighted a brilliant teaching moment where an “egg drop challenge” was used to discuss resilience—comparing a hard, uncracked shell to how people sometimes hide their personal problems instead of asking for help. Consider how other classic, hands-on science experiments could be creatively adapted in the classroom to teach students about mental health, leadership, teamwork, or communication.

Fostering a “Melting Pot” Learning Environment
The GWS Giants utilize their physical spaces, such as a shared cafe located between the administration and the football departments, to break down hierarchical structures and foster a unified culture. Schools and educational institutions might reflect on this design philosophy. How could school environments or daily routines be slightly altered to create a more inclusive, “melting pot” atmosphere where students, teachers, and administration interact more informally and collaboratively?