Two conversations
As the first part of the essay might seem a bit too vague or speculative, I wanted to present two encounters and conversations: One with a student (who is a teacher himself) and one with a co-teacher.
Photo Credit: Christoffer Clausen
1. The puzzled student
A student came to me after class, completely baffled, because I gave different cues to a movement in this class, than last time I taught it — which was several months prior. He said, and I am paraphrasing: “I have practised this technique like a mad man, specifically how you told me to, and now you say that I should do it in a different way. Why?”
Surprisingly, he seemed oblivious to the idea, that we had often discussed and agreed upon, that there are MANY ways to perform a technique since it depends on the level of the student, the situation within which the technique is taught and the greater historical, physical and social context within which the technique is taught.
For example, the student himself might have developed since last time he got a specific correction from me: In the early stages of learning someone might need to put more effort and attention into a movement in order to perform it in accordance with set parameters while in the later stages, a student might need to let go of his or her ideas about a movement and put less effort into it, in order to make it flow. One student might need to push the hip slightly more forward for a given movement and another might need to go easy on “the forward pushing of the hip”.
Again, this might seem like banal examples, that will make most people roll their eyes in obvious agreement, however, I urge you to consider: How often do you present your correction with this level of complexity in your explanations, when you have +15 students to attend to and only 90 minutes to bring your points across?
Going back to a previous point: Most students crave concrete answers and most teachers feel compelled to provide them. If we never discuss the fact that our answers leave out a myriad of potential factors, with our students, then we might provide them with a lot of clear answers in the short run but are we providing them with food for thought and the ability to re-purpose our directions and answers to different situations? If not, I think we’re depriving them of possibilities and I believe that the role of a teacher is to PROVIDE your students with possibilities.
2. Teaching the RIGHT Chin-up
When planning strength classes with a co-teacher, we talked about whether we taught our students to pull their shoulder blades back and down (scapula retraction and depression) because it made the chin-up as a movement easier or because it made it harder (if advocating for difficulty confuses some readers, I will get back to this).
My co-teacher said, that it would benefit the process by making the chin-up easier, also with an insinuation that it would make it “better” and I believed, that it would benefit the process by making the chin-up harder. We discussed this for quite a while.
This is where it gets interesting because we, both teachers and humans in general, have a tendency to talk about whether certain parameters, for example pulling your shoulder blades back and down, ULTIMATELY benefits a process. However, after this conversation, and all the time since, I had to think; benefits the process under which conditions and in which greater context?
In recent years isolating the shoulder blades in pulling (scapula retraction and /or depression) has become trendy among strength coaches and movement teachers, this trend comes mainly from gymnastic strength work.
It is easy to learn? Nope!
For many people, it is very difficult and not very intuitive to isolate the shoulders in pulling, the arms flexes, quite naturally at the elbow for most when they pull. However, incorporating the isolated pulls and one’s strength training will give the student an added capacity for straight arm work in the long run and it will facilitate some of the more difficult patterns where one can also bend the arms.
I do believe, that many teachers of strength and conditioning knows, that this is the recent history behind the scapula retraction and protraction, especially since it is a new trend but a few teachers do not. Already now, some people are teaching this as “the way to do a chin-up” (“Chin-ups, you’ve been doing it wrong all along.com”). With time, I foresee that more and more people will incorporate the isolated use of the shoulder blades as “the right/best way of doing a chin-up”.
Again, the best way under which conditions and in which greater context?
If the goal simply was to teach someone to do a chin-up in the shortest time, most people with rudimentary pulling strength would learn it quicker, if they did not have to learn the isolation of the shoulder blades for it to be considered a correct chin-up.
On the other hand, it is important to remember, that retracting and depressing the scapula is very helpful later on, when learning more difficult pulling patterns.
So instead of trying to convey the “proper way” of executing a technique to your students or discussing the best teaching techniques with your co-teachers maybe it is important to establish a discourse that focuses on upsides, downsides and the context within which a specific technique, or even discipline, is taught.
I will share my tools for assessing context in the third and final part of the essay.
3. Postscript — In a different context
A bunch of my friends, that I have discussed these ideas with asked me, if my thoughts could relate to teaching that was not movement oriented. Here is an attempt at that.
Learning the discipline required to sit down and shut up, in order to learn in a school setting, is by no means easy or pain free for children. However, in the long run it gives the children tools for easier learning in the setting of most classrooms — a setting that we have shaped and defined ourselves.
What seems hard in the beginning might facilitate a process later on.
Furthermore, though we will never truly know, these tools of sitting still and paying attention, longer than what comes naturally to us, might be of help in other situations in life.
Note that I am NOT saying that the current classroom format is the most optimal way of learning, it is just A way of learning and there are techniques that facilitate learning within that setting. Now, if the goal was to shape students who expressed the most interest in learning, the tools to best facilitate that outcome might be different: For example allowing the students to question the curriculum and look at the curriculum from different perspectives. While engaging with learning material on your own terms and through curiosity might seem great, it does not always teach you the discipline required to sit down and finish work for a deadline later on in life — especially a deadline for a project that only you are invested in.
What seems easy and nice at first might complicate things later on.
Both of these qualities; the expression of discipline and attention and the expression of joy and eagerness to learn, are representations of “good students” in the eyes of many teachers — though often by very different kinds of teachers and in different setting. The fact that these qualities are deemed inherently good qualities and not just qualities representative of A way of doing things, makes me wonder how often people are aware of the “meta-framework” (the ideas that shape our ideas) we operate within, when setting criteria for success or “what is good”.
Both qualities facilitate learning, although often in slightly different contexts, so rather than committing to shaping one kind of student, which works very well within one kind of setting, maybe there is sense in creating versatile student, as well as teachers, that can operate well within many different situations.