Recovering Hope in the Sport

Some time ago, I allowed this blog to go fallow. When I began writing about competitive ice sports, in general, and figure skating, in particular, I was interested in what I saw as the resonances—both metaphorical and literal—between skating and writing. I was intrigued by what I saw (and continue to see) as the critical and dynamic interplay between technical understanding and ability and aesthetic innovation in both spheres of activity.

In skating, I thought I recognized a grammar of the body that enables and constrains both the physical and aesthetic performance of the athlete. In skating, this grammar is governed by the universal laws of physics and tested (creatively transgressed within limits) by the body of the skater as well as by her aesthetic sensibility across stages of physical, intellectual and emotional development. In skating, one can teach the sport, I suppose, as mere technique. But why would you when excellence in the sport is achieved not by the rehearsal of established technical ability alone, but through the explosion of spectator beliefs about that which is physically and aesthetically possible to achieve?

In the teaching of writing, many of us are working with students in both classroom and one-with-one settings (coaching) in ways that are deeply informed by the pedagogical theory of Lev Vygotsky. Briefly, Vygotsky demonstrated that students learn better and retain knowledge longer when they are provided with meaningful intellectual scaffolding as they learn in what he termed the “zone of proximal development:” at the outside edges of their prior knowledge. Simply put, when students are asked to repeat what they already know, they learn less, learn more slowly, and retain new understanding for shorter periods of time than when they are provided with support for using prior knowledge in order to produce new understanding. I have been intrigued with the sport of figure skating and with coaching of skaters for the ways in which I can observe this principle in use. Skating is a sport learned through the acquisition of technical understanding and ability under conditions of supported experimentation and risk.

I didn’t stop blogging because I lost interest in either the sport or what might be learned about teaching by studying the relationships and interactions between skaters and coaches. I stopped blogging because relationships within the world of skating can become poisonous in the same way that those within academia can. Internecine struggles within skating clubs among parents and between coaches can suck the joy out of the sport with astonishing rapidity for parents and, more importantly, for young skaters like my daughter. And as in such battles in academia, in skating the stakes can be absurdly low. In my professional life, if there’s a battle in which the stakes seem significant, I’m willing to stay with the struggle. But I don’t have the energy or the will for battles animated by ego, narcissism, and naked aggression—the willingness to harm anyone or anything to advance one’s own interests—either in academia or in figure skating. Particularly not in figure skating. Under the heading of “fool me once…” when poison seeps into the lobbies of rinks and the stands of ice arenas, I’ve learned to put my gas mask on and stay low.

But things have changed for me and for my figure skating daughter. I recently accepted a faculty post at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. We have moved here and Grace is now a member of a new skating club. The Kitchener-Waterloo Skating Club is trying out a new approach to the development of its skaters—an approach predicated on cooperative coaching of individual skaters, more significant and sustained group coaching, and an organized and developmentally based off-ice program. To succeed at this new initiative, the Club is working with both skaters and parents to build a meaningful social support network for all skaters. I’m pretty sure I heard the Club President, Dr. Paul Mallet, and lead coach, Kris Wirtz, correctly in the last parents’ meeting: for all skaters.

For my daughter, this new approach has meant group lessons not only with her coach’s skaters, but with skaters throughout the Club. She is being taught in group lessons, not only by her own coach but by many different coaches. Grace has the opportunity to work with her lead coach, Lorri Baier, who among other accomplishments possesses significant experience as an elite international competitor. Grace is receiving support from all of the Club's coaches including group and micro-coaching from the current coaches of skaters who in all likelihood will compete at Sochi and have a good shot at standing on the podium there. And all of the coaches with whom Grace is working are actually talking to each other! Working cooperatively with one another!

I am trying not to be mindlessly naïve and optimistic about how this Club experience might prove to be very different for both Grace and for me, but—holy insert-expletive-here. I am slowly and carefully unbuckling my gas mask. And that means, perhaps, that I can write about figure skating and teaching again.