What I've Learned About Teaching from Doing Karate: Day 4

A lesson which has recently resurfaced in my classroom as well as in the karate dojo (almost simultaneously, interestingly enough) is that breakthroughs happen as the result of sustained effort.

For the longest time, I felt that my skills in karate had plateaued (to use a noun as a verb) to the point where it seemed like I was pretty much as good as I was going to get. I kept going to class, even though everyone else around me seemed to be growing by leaps and bounds.

But after a long time of continuing to go to class while the rest of the people at my level grew and got better and went to competitions in cool, far-away places while I would be stuck at home to teach for them at the dojo in their absence, something began to change. Suddenly, everyone was asking me what I was doing to get such power out of my karate. And it wasn't just that, but I really felt it too. I had no idea where it had come from, but I had a lot of power in my punches--a lot more power than had been there before. This didn't come as a result of a sudden push or sudden awakening, it was more like I had chipped away at a huge stone in the way of my progress for long enough that it eventually broke that big boulder in half and then it was suddenly obliterated.

I've seen some profound improvement in several of my students recently. That's just on the individual level. As a class, this group of kids has really come together and gelled into something really cool. I mean it. They're now more than individuals--they're really a unit. And believe me, this did not come as a sudden burst; this was the result of a lot of work. I'm proud of who my class is on every level. I like to think that if I have a strength as a teacher, this is it. But it is really never because of any sudden epiphany. It's always as a result of constant chipping.

After the Red Sox won the world series in 2004, there was an ad in Sports Illustrated (can't remember which company) that said, "Try hard enough for long enough, and your day will come." That quote has been hanging in my classroom ever since.

It can never be "I'll try harder next week..." It always has to be an uphill battle to the next plateau. Then it becomes a steady effort to get through the next plateau.

And something tells me there's a lesson to be learned about enjoying those plateaus while working through them. But that's for another time.