Teaching practice Archives

Bind Ambition; a rant

Ambition is the last refuge of failure. ~Oscar Wilde

Hungry. Restless. Itchy.

It is in your bones. You have it or you do not. I am not trying to mystify any constructs here, I am getting to the heart of the matter.

Motivation. Ambition. You are always doing what you are motivated to do.

For those who are indeed ambitious, there are some critical steps necessary to develop functional activity and connect that activity to achievement.

Acknowledge
Define
Plan
Discriminate
Sleep

Acknowledge the flood of interests, curiosities, and knowledge that you have. No humble-brag. No intended arrogance, here. It is important to have some self-awareness. I will touch on that in other sections as well. You are someone who has made it this far because you are motivated and love to know about things. You have developed a method for mastery of plenty of domains and you know enough to be an asset to many other people and, if you are not careful, you will be stretched thin and get nothing done.

Define your core interests. I know, it is hard. It is like picking your ONE favorite record or your SINGLE favorite book. Nearly impossible but not impossible. What is the one you couldn’t live without. Well, the same has to be true of your primary contribution. What will people say about you when you are dead? Gone? What is on your career tombstone? What is engraved on your retirement watch? What will they say? Will they agree? Does it match your ambitions?

Plan for success. You have whittled your interests down to a single one. That was the hard part–or was it? Find the true beginning. Is there enough of a foundation on which to stand or do you need to revisit? Is it worthy of a full meta-analysis as a foundational paper or project? Even if you have a solid foundation, it is probably worth a full review for your own work. It is probably publishable, as well, especially if you can connect your work to a notable anniversary or new interpretation of the established publications. Map out your three, six, and twelve month activities and mix them up among local and national speaking engagements, opinion or provocative scholarly articles, and eventual publication of original work. Every thing you write should be publishable, even if it is a letter or opinion to a periodical or critical response to a publication. Always have an iron in every fire at every stage of the game and always be ready to tell someone about it.

Discriminate among your projects, prospects, interests, invitations, and pleasures. Do not be a hoarder. Keep a list and either complete a project or kick it off the island. Remember, you are always motivated to do what you do. If a project is on your to-do list too long, you are probably not that into it and will either A) never get it done; or worse B) hate it when you do.

Sleep. Go to sleep. Sacrificial sleep. Do not allow the distractions to win. The work that you do is necessary, important, and does not belong to you. Put it on paper and let us have it. It is not simply a “contribution to the field” that piles upon piles will justify your position. It may be one thing — or the only thing — that pushes some critical ideas to the surface.

Seventeen and a half Inch Neck

Not everyone knows what it is like to be the odd man out. Lacking fit. I am used to it in lots of ways. Outside of education discussions, my most persistent experience with this is when I buy clothes. You see, I am built for speed. Not too high off of the ground so as to incur headwinds. I have been known to hit the gym. So when I need, say, a shirt this is often the beginning of a bit of an adventure. The best method to get around this is to know what brands and what stores make clothes that fit my body type. In the case of clothing that cannot be tried on, like a new Jiu Jitsu gi, I have to call or send an email. It usually goes like this:

What size gi should I order?
Have you looked at the sizing chart?
Yes. I’m 5’7″ and 210 lbs.
Well, which is it?
What?
If you’re 5’7″ you should get an A2.
But I’m 210 lbs.
Oh. Well, I guess you can buy an A3 and try to shrink it.

Now try getting a dress shirt with 32 arms and a seventeen and a half inch neck. This sums up a lot of areas in my life.

You know? I can’t get behind that.

Classrooms are not designed for class activities, they are designed for class sizes. Seated.

I can’t get behind that.

Curricula are designed for tests. Or teachers.

I can’t get behind that.

Teachers are prepared for management.

I can’t get behind that.

Education is designed for compliance and one path is the best and variants are considered failures.

I can’t get behind that.

It is 2014 and we are not required to accept everything that is given to us. To fit. It is time to rebel. We can no longer accept the teacher who is not also an activist and advocate.

Passivity is acceptance. Endorsement. Establish the rule of engagement. Engage. Fight.

Dig into Goodness of Fit. Seek to understand why we do not have to fit.

Sink Swim or Fight?

The ground is my ocean, I’m the shark, and most people don’t know how to swim. ~Carlos Machado

It’s been almost ten years since I began training in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and today it hit me. I need to decide to get better or I need to quit.

I get into physical things–no matter what they are–in the spirit of Steve Prefontaine. At first it may be curiosity, or frugality (I do a lot of my own remodeling at home), but the sustaining interest is powered by Pre: to see who has the most guts.

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is first about guts. Stepping on the mat places you in a world where few enter and fewer and fewer stay. That is not even considering the levels of success any one may achieve.

In my experience, my learning curves are steeper than some. Over time they regress to the norm as they should. Depending on the domain, they may stay ahead of those around me. I know this about myself and, admittedly, I allow it to prevent me from working hard–norm calibrated rather than criterion calibrated. As a musician I could stay pretty consistently ahead of the curve when in a new situation without any effort.

That is a confession not braggadocio.

It is shameful to think that spending time practicing could have produced a variety of outcomes, some with life changing potential. I did not act.

While an undergrad it became known that I played the french horn though it was not my major instrument. The orchestra director offered to secure an instrument and I requested weekly lessons in exchange for my participation. A golden opportunity to study with a well known musician and to perform both repertoire and some contemporary music. My teacher told me I had a beautiful tone and excellent pitch. I rarely practiced. Made plenty of mistakes in rehearsals. It did not last but I look back and wonder what could have been different if I took hold of that opportunity wholeheartedly.

I am reminded of an Old Testament passage where the prophet Elisha tells the King of Israel to strike the ground with an arrow.

18 And he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground with them.” And he struck three times and stopped. 19 Then the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times; then you would have struck down Syria until you had made an end of it, but now you will strike down Syria only three times.” (2 Ki 13.18-19)

That being said, I can always say that I could have done more. And further, I am not including all of the other life factors that may have had a genuine influence on how committed I was to the work. AND I was a kid–that was a lifetime ago.

Bringing me back to my practice of Jiu Jitsu and my attempt to maintain an reflective awareness of my practice. When I began studying Jiu Jitsu, I was good. Or, at least, that is what I was told by others. I was able to get to class three or more times each week and was not in tremendous shape. I watched videos and read books about Jiu Jitsu. I was in. Deep.

Jump ahead. Craniotomy. Complete grad school. Have a daughter. Buy a house, work on house, move, keep working on house. Have a son. Shoulder repair. Change jobs. That last few years have not had me on the mats very much at all. Schedules have been rough. Recovery from a recent surgery was slower than expected. I have been on the mats twice since getting the OK from the doctor.

What was most clear today is that everyone has improved. My skills that were competitive a few years ago are not as competitive as they were. Attribute some of that to rust and being a little gunshy with the shoulder, fine. I was constantly scrambling and defending. Out of breath. HOT.

Granted, I managed to get in a full class and three or four sparring matches afterwards. All tough matches for me–I like to train with people who are better than me and I do not mind “losing” at all. I say “losing” because we all know that it means very little to tap or reset a sparring match. Some folks still keep track. I do. A little.

I am tired and sore. Worse than that is that I know what I need to do to improve and have to decide if I am willing to start doing it.

Signal to Noise: Behavior

If you allow the business of school to weigh too heavily, it will undermine the foundation of your craft. Focused on the trouble around you, everyone becomes an adversary and eventually the students become problematic.

All you can see is the noise. Behavior — a neutral term — becomes a specific term. Bad Behavior. “I cannot handle their behavior.” The implication is undesirable and pervasive.

By adding meaning to behavior — recognizing patterns, purposes, and goals — we may begin to understand see the signals that are being transmitted.

Signal : Noise as Soil : Dirt

Rather than viewing behavior as desirable and undesirable, I would like to observe it as placed and misplaced. This afternoon I spent many hours weeding our garden — removing what was mis-placed. When I was finished, I left my boots on the porch so that the soil I was working did not become dirt on the living room floor. As I consider this example of placement within context, I laughed as I remembered taking a moment to rinse my hands with the hose. There I was: surrounded by soil, plants, and pulled weeds wanting “clean” hands. My behavior was not appropriate for the context as I had more work to do and more time in which to do it. Sometimes, I guess, a repose is important — I will bring that thought to the classroom as I am sure a student will need a repose mid-task.

Heading into this year, I look to putting things in their correct place. Setting my feet firmly. Defending the faith. Finding my allies. Doing my thing.