Teaching practice Archives - Page 4 of 13

Becoming Nobody

Online chess. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. It is a stretch to say that I like losing but I consider myself game. Gamey? Gamer. Willing. Much more willing to lose than not to play. Grow or at least have the experience. That will pave the way one pebble at a time.

So often you will hear in a conversation or read in a blog or social media outlet that someone considers themselves a “lifelong learner.” I wonder what they are learning? In my informal survey of these statements, it is typically a statement about one’s willingness to improve or change their current skills. Is that not what everyone does or is expected to do? Formally, I would enjoy gaining more information about genuine levels of objective growth and change rather than anecdotes about life-changing events and decisions that “really moved (institution X) forward.

As one who enjoys martial arts, I look at all areas of my life to reveal my training partner. It changes by day and by context but the function is the same. By working together, each one has the goal of improving their skill and they cannot do it alone. Regardless of your training partner, you can only have one competitor. Self. Choose how much practice takes place, quality of food, level of hydration, and intensity of work. Make the decision to be present. Aware.

Before I step onto the mats I determine my attitude and I am sure that it influences who obliges when I offer to pair up for a session of training. So many would love to say that “any given Sunday” I may win a match or lose a match; have an up day or a down day. That is not the case. My training session begins the night before when I decide to get a decent night’s sleep and moves forward with decisions throughout the day. There are not many decisions to be made. There is one. Then another one.

Me and Relson — Mugging for the camera with Relson Gracie

Watching the documentary “Bobby Fischer Against the World,” I heard David Shenk saying that there were 40,000 moves on a chess board after the first move. If you know anything about chess, you know that this is inaccurate. From both a mathematical standpoint as we as a meaningful standpoint, it is inaccurate. The only one with thousands of moves before them in a chess match is a fool.

Every decision made through the day determines an analog success or failure on the mat that evening. However you may score it. We all score it somehow. That is how we measure growth. I will not pretend to be one of the “all for fun” types. I will not claim to be a technician or analyst of the game but I know this–there are necessary and sufficient conditions in order to achieve growth and most of them depend on me.

Become nobody. Be humble. Serve. Give. Leave your ego at the door. I will take it one step further…maybe several steps. Those decisions that you make all week determine the type of training partner you will be for someone and reciprocally, they will then be for you. Rather than simply preparing yourself to respond and react, prepare yourself to be your best for someone else.

Who you callin’ a MOOC?!

My first job out of college was at a classical record store. It was one of the best record stores in the city–hands down. That includes rock stores. By standards of stock, we were unmatched. The store manager was a composer who had studied with Maxwell Davies and the assistant manager was a mean fiddle and bouzouki player who recruited me into his celtic rock band, The Hooligans. We had fun. The store had some basic tenets. We were open every day from 9am until midnight. No matter what. We had–in stock–every record in print and often several records that were out of print. It was a haven on South Street in Philadelphia. You know. Where all the hippies meet.

It was around that time that digital audio tape was still around. Digital cassettes were new and already fading. Laserdiscs were still being bought and sold (for good reason). Super Audio Compact Discs were becoming the rage for the audiophile set. It was a growing set.

People wanted def. Hi def. They mos def wanted as much def as you could get. They paid for it, too.

A typical new release cd was selling for $14.99. That’s $16.04 after the (formerly) 7% sales tax. On sale it would be $11.99 ($12.83). Yes, I still remember 7% of most retail price points–do not even mess with me. Super audio compact discs (SACD) were selling at above $20 which was a stretch for a lot of consumers. Most were around $22.99 which after tax is pushing $25 and pushing a lot of people away from the idea of high definition.

There are some things that you need to understand about the recording process–or any creation process–in order to understand why these quality standards were, in many ways, a farce. That is not to say that there was any deception. But there was surely a misperception. The misperception that a SACD of George Szell’s famous Beethoven Symphonies may sound like they were recorded using today’s technology–noiseless, bright and alive. Often times, it was just the opposite. These super-recordings often emphasized the faults of recordings or the editing process was very recognizable. The end result in the early digital age of music left us longing for our vinyl records and tube amplifiers.

Many failed to read the disclosure statements and the labels on the backs of cds. I do not even know if they are still there. We ‘in the industry’ knew the ages of the recordings and the quality of recordings from experience, Schwann or Peterson’s guides, or from complaints heard when a recording was returned. Overall, you got what you paid for. That $7.99 Great Performances on Sony? Yes. It is a great performance. A great performance that sounds like someone in the percussion section is frying up some sausages. You see a perfect 24-bit digital copy of an analog recording is only as good as the original recording quality.

Cut to: MP3s, file sharing, portable digital players, voila! the iPod.

Apple taught us an important lesson.

file size is more important than sound quality.

Any engineer, mechanic, electrician, or team leader will tell you the same thing. You set your tolerances based on the weakest of the components. Back in the SACD 80’s, you would be well set to have a noiseless digital recording playing through your hand-wired amplifier and playing through your active crossover full range of home speakers in a room with an integrated bass trap. It would be lovely. Someone asks you to keep it down and you plug in a $9.99 pair of COBY headphones from Funk-O-Mart and you have broken the chain. All of those other components cannot shine. The same would be said of any other link in that file chain being compromised.

We lowered our high definition standards in the name of fashion and convenience. Portability was also pretty cheap. Easy access was worth it. Chip away. File sharing? Don’t mind if I do. 8-bit? No that’s too low. You Tube? Oh look, video. Chip away. We have enormous televisions and we opt to watch screens inches wide that make videos look really sharp. Chip away, chip away.

So why do I bring this up and what does it reveal? We sacrifice a lot for many reasons. We make a series of decisions that influence the types of options and the types of decisions that follow. Eventually, hopefully, we raise our eyes and look around. We see where we are and realize that we are far off from the road we began. Take inventory. Is this the quality that you expect from yourself and from others? Are the sacrifices in one area worth the gain in another?

If not, what’re you? Some kind of mook? mooc?

I’m a Loser, Baby (Soy un perdedor)

Watching the Metamoris Brazilian Jiu Jitsu submission-only challenge had me thinking about the acquisition of skill–okay, I think daily about the acquisition of skill–but also about how you carry, characterize, and implement skills that you have. Also, I have been revisiting some of my early research about the perception of Expertise in the eyes of those to whom it actually matters. You know, where the rubber meets the road.

Experts meet every day in battle on the chessboard, the mats, all over. There will be a loser–or at least a perceived loser–in each match. A game played to stalemate may be entered into the books as a draw but the players know who was controlling the pace, who was attacking and who was defending, and who was dominant throughout. What do you call an Expert who loses?

I remember when Mike Tyson lost.

You have to ask yourself: Who is a Black Belt in my field? Who checks all the boxes?
Does the loss matter and how pervasive and deceptive is your perception?

And my time is a piece of wax, fallin’ on a termite
That’s chokin’ on the splinters

Beck, Loser

4’8½”

Imagine you are standing on the rail of a set of train tracks and your best friend is standing on the other rail. You face each other and smile. If you are are lucky, perhaps you can touch or even hold hands. Not likely. You see, train tracks have a purpose. They are for travel. They have a destination. If you are on them, you are going somewhere.

eyes on the prize — Mind the gap, Jacques.

I like to think about relationships this way. Work, learning, love. All about relationships. All about perspective. Goals. Finding commonality.

You see, whether you are standing on those tracks with your friend, co-worker, or the love of your life you will notice something. If you focus on where you are, you will see the distance between you.

Four feet and eight inches.

Raise your eyes and see what happens when you focus on the destination. That distance closes and those parallel lines meet. Next time you find that there is distance between you and the important people in your life, ask yourself if you have lost focus on the things that you had in common when you first met. Set your eyes on those loves that you had at first, those things that drove you to be what you are. Those things that drew these wonderful people into your life in the first place.

Look to the goal and close those distances.

oh the trains they have the numbers
the nicknames and the nights
they know it’s ok
to run away and cry

Working together is how we meet.

A shared mission is how we understand one another.