Reflections Archives - Page 4 of 7

Mat Rats–Contextual coaching towards Expertise

It is rare that I have anything that resembles spare time but in the words of Lemmy, who at the time was referencing beer, “There’s no such thing as extra, but you can have some of mine!”

Time is a hot commodity in the @DrTimony household these days and between the full time job, part time job, wife, pre-K mini-@Timony, and sleep, it gets downright sticky. When it gets sticky, stress has its opportunity to creep onto the agenda making the brief moments of repose seem barely worth the while. The first thing that tends to suffer the wrath of the scheduling blade is getting to my gym of choice, Balance Studios. And, as many of the sharper readers know, exercise is probably the one thing that could make a life less stressful.

Getting back to the mats has increased the calm in my life. Some friends have said that it must be nice to “blow off some steam” by sparring. I understand the sentiment but it could not be more distant from the truth. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (the gentle art) provides me with some of the greatest calm that I experience through the week. There is no steam. It is more like meditation. Meditation with chokes and joint locks.

Even while sitting off to the side to catch my breath, I enjoy watching the chess match unfolding before me.

Sloth/Mac — Josh R. Vogel earning his brown belt

This week I was able to take in some excellent instruction and engage in several challenging matches. Watching some friends ‘roll’ gave me time to reflect on my decision making process on the mat as well as the input that I received during and after some matches. It is common to pause after a match, submission, or major positional transition and have a training partner provide a few words of feedback. I sat watching and began to categorize the different types of training partners that I encountered that day and in days past. Listening to the narrative of breaths, compliments, corrections, and encouragements. The roles of individuals on the mat depended on the equity of skills. I found myself in the catbird seat among a dynamic context of coaching and made note of a few characters.

The nicknames that I give to these folks are non-judgmental and are solely intended to differentiate.

The Lion: Confident in skills and willing to let the training partner experience dominant positions to practice their offense. The Lion is conversely willing to place the opponent into unenviable, defensive positions with a fraction of the pressure to encourage escapes with good technique. Timely, rare, encouragements inspire.

Cubs: These are real gamers–there is equity in skill and respect. They match each other in intensity which often varies. The level of effort and challenge is often expressed in percentages. These training partners may agree on a level of challenge at 30-50-75% often called ‘flow-rolling.’ This is done to work on the transition more than the endgame. It is common to hear talk-aloud discussion during their training or to pause to make corrections or to discuss best methods for drilling a particular maneuver.

The Predator: This is the no-nonsense competitor who moves from dominant position to dominant position seeking the submission regardless of the equity of the matchup. For over-matched partners, you will typically see them spending their time surviving and tapping when they cannot prevent the choke or joint lock.

These are only a few of the models that may be seen on the mats and I cannot help but wonder how these context specific coaches may serve to advance high level skill acquisition and the progression towards Expertise. More to come.

At Seventeen

I learned the truth at seventeen
that love was meant for beauty queens
And high school girls with clear skinned smiles
Who married young and then retired — Janis Ian at seventeen

The words of Janis Ian sting. They conjure images of bullied, ignored, thoughtful, and lonely kids. Seventeen is a hard age to learn those truths expressed in her hit song from 1975.

When I hear this song or when it becomes an earworm for days on end, I cannot help but think of my own time in middle and high school. Or undergrad. Graduate school. So on. Present day. Sometimes.

That is not to say that I was friendless or lonely. I place a mental pushpin every time in my life when truth is revealed. Signposts. Bread crumbs. Regardless of what or when, it always seems too early and too often that we learn a hard truth. In education, that is–as an educator, the pins drop like needles on songs. One after another whether you like them or not. Heavy rotation. Top of the pops. Hits. We take a lot of hits.

awkward teens — awkward teenagers lol
by ~JonathanTheSmex

Remember those veteran teachers scorning our eager, go-get-em attitudes with warnings? Their threats seemed so far-fetched. Trite. “Someday, you’ll be just like me.” We laughed them off. We worked hard. We came in early. We stayed late. We graded and prepped during late nights, weekends, and holidays. Grading parties. Thank God for TiVo. “I’m always a teacher so I always do teacher work,” we say. We learn a truth. Get a peek behind the curtain. See that all those appreciations we enjoyed were more fair-weather than once thought. We thought that we were on top of our game and have our legs cut out from under us. We are seventeen again.

Remember those who win the game, they lose the love they sought to gain

A decision is made. We will continue to do it for the kids. Of course we will. The kids. The only convolution is that we are not as resilient as we were at seventeen. Those wounds heal more slowly. Calluses thicken. Eyes look to the floor. We begin to have regrets. Begin to feel all those eyes that gaze.

KNOWLEDGE is POWER. There. I said it.

KNOWLEDGE get a bad rap. In this information age, the assumption is that knowledge is readily accessible, reliable, and palatable. It is crucial that we embrace the fact that accessible knowledge and usable knowledge are not the same. Not even close. I am not big on analogies, but the difference between having access to knowledge and knowing something is like the difference between having access to water and having plumbing. Big difference.

We must separate opportunity from action. Availability is an opportunity to know. Action is required for knowledge to be usable. And guess what? It takes effort.

When we were in grade school, the people in charge required us to memorize and regurgitate. Remember that? They could require it of us. They could judge us based on our efforts and the quality of our outputs. We did not like having to give attention to things that did not interest us, devoting strategic resources to the remembering of basic knowledge. We could have just looked it up. In the end, what did we learn? Recognizing that the taskmaster is in some role of power does not mean that the tasks are meaningless and serve no purpose.

A lot, actually. And we need to admit that. We learned more than just the information.
We learned methods of getting information into our minds permanently (we can debate the quality and permanence of memory another time). Our brains participated in necessary operations to prepare itself for future (more important and potentially relevant) activity. Sometimes (all the time), we ought to stop and consider the unknown influence of learning activities as we critique the explicitly applicable practice that is being logged in the process. We ought to get over the popular practice of power examination in learning situations and just do the work. Sometimes.

Attention — Do I have your attention?

Strategies — What is your strategy for traversing the chasm to memory?

Retrieval — What is your method to activate retrieval structures?

Here is our 21st Century problem: We do not know things anymore.

If you have been in a room with someone who really owns their knowledge, there is something wonderful that happens. They have an ability to develop their thinking around that information in deep and meaningful ways. This is because the information is not taking up real estate in their present memory where lots of free and open abstracting likes to happen but in their permanent memory. How many times have you listened to someone who really KNEW their stuff and found yourself saying–I’ve really got to get X content down so I can really Y my tail off like that person?

Imagine you are having a party with several guests and for dinner you have chosen to have each person make their own pizza. You, as host, will provide every sort of sauce and topping and your guests need to bring the dough that they intend to use. Each guest arrives and sits around the dinner table with their own little crust ready to load their crusts with all kinds of veggies, cheeses, sauces, and the like. And then I show up.

Oh, I did not really read the invitation. Was I supposed to bring a crust? I thought we were going to make crust. I can do it really quick…do you have…? The next thing you know, my 12-15 inch space on your table is not being occupied by a crust but by the ingredients for that crust. It is not quite what you had in mind is it? I have everything I need to make the crust but it is taking up space, disrupting the activity, and my participation–regardless of the gracious kindness of the host–has been altered. I likely missed much of the intent because I showed up without.

Let us decide to know. Something. Well. Now.

RESIST!

In the waning hours of my 40th birthday I am compelled to add a few words. I am not in search of congratulations or affections. It is a milestone that each will likely visit in their lives and I found myself–probably like many do–considering what I should do to commemorate my “accomplishment” of breathing for 14,600 consecutive days.

Lordy, Lordy, Look Who’s Forty

Tattoos–Diets–Exercising of Inalienable rights

How will I mark this occasion? What will change when I wake tomorrow? What will be different? And…why do I write about this?

The final question is my concern and it is framed in educational practice.
Folks, if I have ever had a mantra this may be it. Please do not turn everyday occurrences and typical occasions into reasons for myth, mystique, and superstition. There is no need to spend a day celebrating bad habits because they will change tomorrow–we do not require Fat Tuesday before we execute a cease and desist on poor practice.

Every day, every course, every class is an opportunity to change our practice. It is an opportunity to adapt and to create. There is no event that need be burdened with the decision to master content or to better prepare for the type of course our students deserve.

I would like to think that a change that I make tomorrow will not shock or amaze. I hope that no person says “it’s about time” in regard to something I may adapt next week. Growth tomorrow, I hope, will not be seen as THE DAY I changed but as another change that happened as they often do.

I write this as an encouragement, confession, and challenge. I have not arrived. We have not arrived. The best change we can make is the next one. Let us make them together and encourage one another to be critical of our practice, hopeful of our influence, creative in our approaches, and gracious in our interactions. There is so much to learn.