Reform Without a Model
For most, physical education is what they remember it to be. It was either awful or awesome or wholly unimportant. It remains what it has been for the last fifty years, a seeding ground for sports skills and/or an entry point to fitness. We know it is important for them to “move more”, but teachers dictate the terms in which it is meaningful and valuable. Because they also have to do it under exceedingly trying circumstances (number of students, swath of able-ness in students, un-guaranteed space or equipment or training to provide for recognized needs, etc.), it makes sense that many physical educators in the public sector do as what was done before them. It’s HARD to re-imagine and re-invent while you are juggling recognition and reception of the many humans in your room.
What I didn’t realize until very recently is that the vast majority of people require a model in order to implement change. I had been so used to trying and observing, adjusting and revising that I projected this ability onto a projected peer presence. This skill, developed over 23 years of whittled experience, requires confidence, autonomy, the ability to create with, and the capacity to honestly reflect, assess, and communicate. It’s a long haul centered on trusting a process you happened to make, not for consumption but for function.
I had a moment this last semester, where I felt exactly like Andy Dufresne* (Du-frein), sitting atop the roof he just tarred, savoring watching others enjoy the beer he had brokered.
*If you haven’t seen ‘Shawshank Redemption’, please stop reading this now and find where it is streaming.
To do this, I had to personally wade through rivers of sh*t, and come out clean and triumphant on the other side. (Let it be known, there will always be more sh*t and more planning and more scraping away and more emptying the rubble you have to secretly discard, little by little, so that it goes unnoticed.)**
**Seriously, go watch that movie.
I realized I’d cracked the structure-unstructured code that binds and limits so much in experiential learning. I had tested and theorized my way to a formula that worked. In EVERY class. EVERY kid had come to know what it is they like to do, and was given enough tools to explore it on their own, on their terms.
There are so many layers to this. Freedom and the responsibility one owes oneself and others when given it. The propensity to listen and care for oneself. The capacity to pay attention and apply/ interact with what that attention has brought into awareness. And finally, the difficult and patience-testing task of allowing oneself be fully human.
This work matters to me because it is an extension of me.
The next long road will be delivering it to others.
Getting things done has never been a problem for me.
Now I just have a focused mission to give away, to anyone who wants it.
To what comes next and the joyful process of deliverance,
Chris
Feature photo from Columbia/ Allstar via the Guardian.