Rambling Thursday Morning Thinking

I was at an indoor soccer practice last night while reading several books I got out of the Bird Library. I was reading Gloria Ladson-Billings, Lisa Delpit & Victoria Purcelle-Gates and thinking about how language, especially school language, is a ticket to success. I was watching as the coach conducted very detailed drills that asked the kids to do small passes in the air after bouncing a soccer ball off their chest onto the top of their foot, so they could lift it at exactly the right height to another player to make a play. This made me think about Nikki's recent exercise to toss her rifle parallel to a school fence in order to correct a pitched angle with her lift so her toss was more perpendicular than angled (if it was angled, it'd hit the fence and bounce in her face - that would learn her).

I started thinking about schools and teaching English, and how too often the detailed skills of practice are not expected of students to gain tools for later play. Skills and drills, when intentional and purposeful, are meaningful and useful. A kid learning to write in their first language or their second language need opportunities to play with language in the ways writers do, so when they are given writing tasks for real life, they are experienced and practiced with what might be expected of them. A child who doesn't have skills and drills with written language are not prepared to play the game.

I've always been drawn to the coaching/facilitating model of teaching where an educator has enough knowledge to know what a student needs to move to the next level of their practice. In many ways, I recognize my mentors at Syracuse University have been doing similar work with me as they prepare my mind to practice the art of academic writing. The expectation cannot be there alone. Instead, steps towards the process, with practice, are needed so when the time comes for an individual to show what they can do, they'll be able to do it.

I quit piano. I quit trumpet. Consequently, I can't play either. Still, I admire those who can and wish now I paid greater attention to the skills of becoming a musician so that I could one day play music. Instead, I turned to books and reading. It brought me to writing. No one teacher was a guru on a mountain. The truth is there were multiple teachers who offered several, differing drills and practice that gave me more tools to work with.