Future Perfect

Grace has a new pair of skates. Grace has gotten her first pair of truly new skates. Always before we have purchased used skates, but this time round, Grace has gotten a pair of brand new skates. And because her feet have grown so much, she has also gotten new blades.

Breaking in new skates is no fun (even when they're new-used skates, but even more so, I think, when they're new, new skates). So for the last few weeks, we've been in the throes of adjusting and tweaking and Grace has had to go out on the ice even when her feet and ankles hurt so that the necessary adjustments to their fit can be made.

Grace had been skating in her new boots for about a week when Jason determined that the blades needed to be moved. He marked the boots to show how he wanted the blades shifted; I picked Grace up from school early one day last week and drove her to the Winning Edge in Omaha for the adjustment. The next morning, Grace had another lesson with Jason.

I watched from the lobby as Grace took the ice. Jason watched her skate for about three minutes before he motioned to me to come rink-side. "That left blade is perfect," he pronounced, "but the right blade isn't there yet. I'm going to get a screwdriver." Having borrowed the tool from Terry, one of the rink's workers, Jason set to work. He sat Grace down and took her foot in his lap and looked at the blade. Carefully, he loosened the screws holding the front of her blade in place and shifted the blade back and forth, pausing to consider its positioning as he manipulated it until he was satisfied. I'm pretty sure he didn't move that blade further than an eighth of an inch. He tightened the screws, patted Grace on the back, and said, "okay, let's go." I have to admit, I was a little nervous. I don't even want to think about how much those boots and blades cost. And an 1/8 of an inch? There was probably a part of me that was thinking, "this is like fixing a comma and thinking the writer will now be transformed."

I learn a lot about teaching and about coaching by watching Jason work with Grace. In some ways, as a parent, their work together is hard to watch. Together, they focus on what appear to be minutiae. Jason guides Grace in working the an edge in the entrance to a jump or a spin over and over and over again. Or a landing position. Or the reach and stretch of an arm. It's slow, hard work. There's not a lot of drama. And if what you imagine is some sudden, spectacular, epiphanic accomplishment, I've learned, you're likely to be disappointed. No, Jason is not coaching for the "A" to be awarded at the end of a session or a season; he's not coaching for a first place finish at the next competition. I think (and this is what I'm learning about teaching by watching Jason work with Grace) that he is coaching to open up a range of possibilities for Grace as a skater in process, a skater with a future though no one, not even Grace or Jason, can predict what that future might be. And Jason, I think, is uninterested in predicting an ideal future for Grace and teaching toward that singular possibility. He is teaching in service opening up the future to multiple possibilities.

I observed, I believe, in Jason's shifting of a blade an 1/8 of an inch an example of a teacher working in future perfect. When teachers engage the future perfect, we are imagining ourselves forward in time with a student and asking ourselves, "if we move this way, if we change this thing, what will this student be working on with me or with some other teacher/writer two weeks from now? a year from now? five years from now?" The move is not a culminating one; not a finish, but an articulation of possibilities, of potentialities.

Serious skaters tend to stay with coaches for a long time. Hence the admonitions Mike and I received against changing coaches and moving Grace to Jason. It may be that writing teachers and tutors, unlike figure skating coaches, don't have the luxury of years. But I'm not convinced we need to know the future or have certainty about what our relationship with a writer will be in order to teach the way Jason teaches skating to Grace. I'm not sure that this kind of future-perfect-mind requires certainty that there will be a "we" or a "together" weeks or months or years from now. The operative question in future-perfect-mind is what might be possible for this student if we do this thing now, and not whether the teacher will be present when possibilities are realized or not. This is a new way, for me at least, of thinking about student-centered teaching.

Teaching with future-perfect-mind might also shift how we conceive of teaching at the outside edges of students' ability in what Lev Vygotsky called "the zone of proximal development" (the learning space between what students already know and what they might be able to learn or do given a teacher or coach's conceptual (or, in the case of skating, physical) scaffolding and support). When Jason works with Grace, he engages her in the acquisition of a kind of grammar of the body that is specific to figure skating. These are the rules of motion, of movement -- of physics and muscle and mind -- that constitute the athleticism and aesthetics of the sport. But it would be a mistake, I think, to believe that acquisition of, fluency in this body-grammar is all there is to skating. The grammar is the structure that makes that which we have never seen before not just imaginable, but possible. Skaters, like writers, who inspire our awe do not merely perform this grammar to perfection; they press on its limits, extending the possibilities for what might be expressed, what meaning may be made in and through it.

So when Jason engages in future-perfect-mind as he works with Grace, he teaches not with the conviction that Grace will be the next Yu-Na Kim. Not only is that highly unlikely, it's not particularly desirable. The point is not to use the body-grammar of skating to replicate what others have already accomplished, but to use that grammar to discern what this skater will have done when she has done all she wants and is capable of doing. He's teaching with an openness to the graceness of Grace, to possibility, to potential, to a host of futures, some of which may include skating.

That's cool. At least I think so. And as a final note (not sure if I've said this aloud or written it already on the blog), changing coaches is the best thing we ever did for Grace.

Tidbits

Here's a story about Lucy:

So Lucy had a tournament last weekend in Sioux Center, Iowa with her Squirts team (co-ed). Lucy's coach has moved her back to play on a defensive line. Now, Lucy is a girl who likes to get her ice time. The team had won every game in the tournament. They're playing in the last game and things are shaping up nicely to take home first place. They're in the last few minutes of the game when Lucy's good friend, Kean, takes a rather pointless penalty. Kean is a fantastic player, but he does have a tendency to take bad penalties. The coach sends out Lucy's line absent Lucy (for reasons that surpasseth understanding, in my opinion). In any case, Lucy is PISSED. She fumes on the bench. She fumes through the end of the game and the celebration of taking home the tournament championship. She marches into the locker room; marches up to Kean; and dumps a full bottle of cold water over his head; marches straight back out again.

Beware the ire of Lucy.

Still waiting to see what if anything Coach will say...