Learning through Testing

"Taking a test is not just a passive mechanism for assessing how much people know, according to new research. It actually helps people learn, and it works better than a number of other studying techniques." - To Really Learn, Quit Studying and Take a Test, New York Times, January 20, 2011

I read this article when it first came out a few weeks ago, and thought how appropriate it was to the approach our master is taking with this year's black belt training cycle. So far Black Belt Candidates have been tested on two different areas, and will be tested in four others before they are deemed ready for Power Weekend (our school's black belt exam).

For many people taking a test has always been a stress/anxiety inducing trial, which taps into bad memories of school years best forgotten. And it is true that for the black belt cycle, we as instructors do want to induce a bit of stress on our test takers, in order to see how they respond. But what we really want people to focus on is not whether they pass or fail (that in some ways is our concern, not theirs), but what they learn from the test and what steps they need to take to improve.

This point in the cycle is always a bit daunting. People have been training for a long time, and while they have all seen results, they can sometimes start to coast a bit, or see a drop in motivation, or feel a bit anxious about what is coming next. At our school we respond to this often by increasing the pressure – it is now time to separate the wheat from the chaff and see who is really prepared for what is coming in May. As a student preparing for black belt weekend, what helped me was to treat each training session as a test – How did I perform? What did I do well? Where can I improve? Who was falling down and needs help getting back up?

My role as an instructor is to carefully calibrate what I am demanding from these students, so that when the people who are actually going to grade them on Power Weekend show up, the shock won't be too bad. I was looking forward to this black belt cycle, and I am quite pleased with how things are going – but while time is getting short, there is still a long way to go for most of the people hoping to grade, and I will have to be creative in finding ways to help them discover their limits, and get past them.

Church, or something to do on a Sunday

For most of my life, I have had at best an ambivalent relationship with religion and church going. At one point in my life, the rituals of the Catholic church held great solace for me, but that waned, and I have gone back and forth on its place in my life. I appreciate a lot of what my religious upbringing has given me, but find much of the structure and teachings of the church to be hard to accept. But I do feel there is great value in having the church play a role in the ethical instruction of my children, and want them to gain enough knowledge about it in order to eventually make their own choices about the place religion and church should have in their lives.

Both my sons have been baptized, and both will receive as many sacraments as they wish to. In the next year or two both of them will be of the age to qualify for first communion and confirmation, so we have decided that we should spend this year going to church regularly. We've been to mass every Sunday since the new year began.

I'm actually surprised that I am … enjoying (?) it. So far no one has said anything to piss me off, and our parish priest is a bit of a scriptural analyst, so he's doing the kind of exegesis with the weekly texts that I actually like – I don't always agree with him, but it has been refreshing to hear him.

It does give me a lot of pause though when I think of friends I have who would not necessarily be welcomed in our church, and at the lack of acknowledgment on the part of the church hierarchy to the crimes committed by its members. But not being able to resolve those feelings, or find a solution to those issues is not necessarily a reason to stay away from mass on Sundays…at least for this year and next. We'll see if things change.

Flab control

The winter is always my most challenging season for training. I hate getting up in the dark, my asthma is always at its worst, and without a serious motivation (like getting ready for a black belt test), doing the kind of training I'm used to doing in the warmer months is really hard. I get to the dojang as often as I can, and that helps maintain a certain level of fitness and technical aptitude, but my training regimen outside the school takes a serious nose dive, leading to a flabby centre, and an ever tightening waistline of my pants.


This also has the effect of depressing me mentally – I set unrealistic expectations for my performance, don't meet them, and then feel bad about it, which in turn makes me even less motivated (vicious cycle anyone?). So, in response, I've made some decisions: First, revise my expectations. From November to April, I will focus on technical improvement and curriculum mastery (this has been helped along tremendously by some special Monday morning classes that my master is giving for me and another senior student).

Second, for this time period, rather than set goals I'm not going to reach for outdoor cardio activities, I will instead concentrate on the four fundamental body weight exercises for physical fitness:

push ups

pull ups

pistol squats

plank

We'll see where I am in March with this. Third, I'm restarting my journal, and am doing a much better job of making writing it a habit. Finally, once the weather warms up, and we start to see the sun a bit more often, its back out on the road I go…

Barbados

At the end of November I took a trip to Barbados with my family, my mom and my dad. My mom and dad have been tracing our family trees, and it seems certain that my dad's family has been in Barbados since the early 1700s. He left when he was 20, in April of 1957. I grew up going back and forth to the island every few years, and this trip was the second time I had taken my sons to see where their grandfather grew up. But it was the first time my dad had been back in the island since 2002, and the first visit he has been able to have to his original home with his grandchildren.

I love visiting this place. The sights, sounds, smells and tastes of the island are a part of me in ways I don't really realize until I go back. I forgot how much I miss the ocean, or the sounds of the surf at night, or the smell of mahogany furniture…All of these were formative to my growing up.

What made this trip really special was the time I spent talking to my dad about his life in the island. He has lived more than 50 years in Canada, but I was never quite clear on why he had left Barbados in the first place – I always got a vague 'there were more opportunities in Canada' explanation. But this time I really got to hear from him details about his relationship with his father, and the frustrations he felt about growing up in Barbados. I've struggled throughout my life with connecting to my father, and the moments spent with him on vacation this time were very special.

My hope as a father is that I have found a way to connect with my children at an earlier age, then what happened with my dad and I.

This was the happiest I had seen my dad in a while, especially when he was watching his grandsons, and seeing old places that had changed so much.

My sons and wife love visiting this place, and hopefully we can go back again soon.

Postings are on their way!

I fell into a posting rut after getting back from Barbados in December. I have a long list of posts to put up, and will be doing so in the next day or so. Stay tuned!