Power found between two trees

[Edit: Started writing this January last year]

There is a pair of old trees in Antwerp. Walking from one to the other I get stronger, faster, happier.

I've been trying to figure out how I can be a better teacher.

In college, we had this really helpful and organised teacher, he was tremendously dedicated to his craft; wonderful command of engineering mathematics. His notes and lectures laid it all out with superb clarity; matter-of-fact. But when it came down to exam and study time - it was all like grasping water; the stuff was hard to reproduce and apply. He made me feel it was easy; "All you have to do, folks, is..." But it needed more work. He made us feel safe and secure with his notes and lectures. Complacent.

Unintentionally unsuccessful.

In secondary school, we had a mathematics teacher, who was on the other end of the spectrum; she offered little to any sense of security in her classes, to the point that I was the only one out of 12 that did not find a tutor for extra support. Strangely, the end result was that the class did spectacularly as a whole; Bs and As all round. In a Machiavellian way, she created a circumstance where her students could excel.

Unintentionally successful.

Risk Compensation - a theory which suggests that people typically adjust their behavior in response to the perceived level of risk, becoming more careful where they sense greater risk and less careful if they feel more protected. Not enough perceived risk and we'll stagnate, too much and we'll flounder.

Where's that middle ground? Spoonfeeding; cast adrift..

During his workshop two years ago at Elite Athletes,  Tom Weksler talked about his approach to teaching floor-work and acrobatics; he wanted us to get a feel for moving around down there, for us to get a grasp the motor principles at play. He was resigned to the fact that he had to teach us a pattern of moves because he had found it the best way to learn lessons. But he invited us to figure out what the movement and pattern illustrated.

I had my first session with my kung fu student this evening, since the Fighting Monkey Intensive in Athens.

Fascinating, rich, thought-consuming and frustrating. It reminded me of the Buddhist adage:

"When you meet Buddha on the road, kill him."

Jozef and Linda spent 5 days showing us a full spectrum of concepts: stillness, rhythm, collaboration, situational movement instead of rote movement. Challenging us to find our own insights from the situations.

So for the coming 2 months I will not give him technical or detail corrections, instead I am going to suggest a quality that a movement or set or exercise cultivates and let him judge and question for himself if he can solve it.

The Form of Father, central in the Fighting Monkey practice, as Jozef pointed out is a set of exercises, a lot of them similar to what they do on soccer pitches every weekend, nothing holy. But the story of the father form is rich. This is 8000 thousand years old, something precious, healing, comprehensive and powerful; it will heal you and more.

My experiences and what I have heard from others that work in embodiment (Mark Walsh, Francis Bryers, Anouk Brack, Paul Linden) is that the body is very porous/sympathetic to the intention/purpose:

If I believe something, the body will do its best to support and cultivate that perception. It's why pharmaceutical companies bend themselves over backwards with double blind studies, to ensure that the patient has no inkling if it is the real pill or the sugar pill they are taking.

At the end of the session, I pointed at two grand stately trees several paces apart. I told him walking between these two trees would make him more powerful. He just has to figure out how that could be true.

Get creative, Yo

I saw a chart on Facebook a while back. It showed a decreasing trend in creativity in children from the beginning of their education all the way up to the end of high school. This was based on the Torrance creativity tests. While I was looking for the aforementioned picture (I never did find it), I came across this nicely written post called the "Creativity Crisis" by Po Bronson.

Part of me was tempted to go on a literature review for the correlations with/mechanisms behind the decades long decline in creativity and then the trend through childhood education itself. I decided instead of getting bogged down in the vicious circle that is looking for valid information that I may as well just give my opinion, which is the main reason for my blog.

As was said in the post I linked, the emphasis on standardised tests and rote learning are correlated with the fall in creativity. But I think that there are subtle nuances there. Specifically I was thinking about the way school exercises were approached when I was there.

In mathematics and sciences, what we are taught in class is reinforced by working on problems oriented around the principles. That's all well and good for internalising a specific skill, but the disadvantage is that it becomes very easy for children (I mean "me") to fixate on how the problem is solved as opposed to what the result is. We (I mean "I") can become conditioned to expect all the tools to solve a problem being clearly lined-up and colour-coded in front of us (I mean... you get the idea). It reminds me a bit of the adage from Maslow:

"[...] if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail [...]"

Although, I would contend it is a bit more insidious than that; it's more a case of: "I was only told I could use the hammer." It's something that trips me up often in work, at least more often than I would like. I have tunnelvision solving problems... what tools to use and what is possible. What I'm trying to do these days is consider what is the desired outcome and not fixate on a path that I thought would lead me to it.

I think what could be an interesting idea for teachers to employ when teaching is only doing 50% of the exercises explicitly using the prescribed method and the other 50% letting the kids go nuts, i.e. solving the problems whatever way they can. It has a couple of benefits (I think):

1. There's cross-pollination; they are more likely to remember the thing they learned earlier and not discard them at the end of course section 
2. They get into the habit of looking at the problem and sizing up what could work to solve it based on the pros and cons of different techniques
3. They build-up a personalized repertoire of techniques for solving problems
4. They won't shoehorn a technique into a problem just because it worked for other problems in the vicinity
5. They'll be more adaptable when a technique doesn't work

Added bonuses, based on successes borne of their own initiative, they could become more confident and more likely to be assertive when faced with challenges - at least that is what my gut tells me; I only have a doctorate in chemical engineering, not psychology... :/

Maybe I'm completely of the mark, but it sounds reasonable enough to me.

There's a nice parable that infers the things I just opined. Part of me feels a bit raw that I haven't offered something novel. But, there's a very rewarding rush to arrive at an answer on your own, that isn't diminished by discovering the answer existed already. I think kids should get used to that feeling. 

Make them problem-solving junkies!¹

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¹Not to be confused with junkies that solve problems... Ah English... your ambiguity is easy pickings for some classic jokes. And hilarious example of one at that, if I might add.ⁱ

ⁱI may.