Proud of the Process

Last weekend, my son hit the ball extremely well during the stretch of a five game baseball tournament that we played. And while I don't know all of his statistics, I recall that he hit four doubles each one landing in a gap over the top of where the outfielders were playing. I'm sure that he felt proud of the way that he hit the ball.

I’m reading a couple of books, Win in the Dark (Joshua Medcalf and Lucas Jadin) and The Inner Game of Tennis (W. Timothy Gallwey), and listening to another, The Decision (Kevin Hart), that all emphasize the importance of mindset. For almost a decade, now, I’ve been a huge proponent of developing a growth mindset. A conclusion that I’ve drawn is that you can’t claim to have a growth mindset without being process driven. Consequently, when you’re focused on the process (and not necessarily the outcome) it is natural to embody the characteristics of a growth mindset.

Anyways... as I was reading and listening to these books, I started to reflect on my son’s weekend of baseball. As his Dad, I was extremely proud of him. However, I have to be really cautious about how I frame my praise and project my feelings to my son. If he understands my feelings of being proud of him for his extra base hits then I’ve missed my mark. 

If he thinks that I'm proud of him for hitting doubles, then he'll be led to believe that I'm not proud of him when he doesn't hit doubles.

Hitting a double every time that you come-up to bat isn’t sustainable. Putting in the work that allows you to prosper is within his realm of control; effort and preparation are sustainable. That's what I have to be sure to praise - his engagement in the process, which he partakes in that allows him to be able to get a few extra base hits over the course of a weekend. 

Here's my son in our garage getting some swings before we had to leave for his tournament games. This is winning in the dark. 

He chooses to take 50-75 swings on game days, before we leave, to best prepare himself. 

This is what makes me proud.

Books About Teaching

As an educator, three of my all-time favorite books that are directly related to education are as follows:

Troublemakers: Lessons in Freedom from Young Children at School, by Carla Shalaby. The New Press, 2017.

I read Shalaby's debut book in June 2018. To describe this book in a word, 'Wow!' And although it won't sit well with everyone that's okay; it's good to have our thinking stretched in ways that make us uncomfortable. Check, this book does that. Shalaby shares the school experience of four elementary school children before closing with a powerful letter to teachers.

"...schools value quiet children over loud ones and operate as though adults are the only teachers in the room. The adults get to speak while they young people listen. Questions are answered rather than asked. Our schools are designed to prepare children to take their assumed place in the social order rather than to question and challenge that order. (p. xvi) ...I am calling on all educators - those in our classrooms, in our homes, and on our streets - to embrace and to respond to the urgency of our collective need to teach love and to learn from freedom. (p. xviii) ...We cage the birds singing most loudly. (p. xx) ... Responding differently to our troublemakers is paramount to meeting our responsibilities as educators and as human beings." (p. 180)

 

Better than Carrots or Sticks: Restorative Practices for Positive Classroom Management, by Dominique Smith, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey. ASCD, 2015.

I read this book in January 2016, and it was probably my first introduction to restorative practices. It was more than just a book about restorative practices, however. This book emphasized, at the foundational level, relationships and high quality instruction. Those are your starting points...for everything else! Furthermore, I would make a strong case that relationships precede high quality instruction.

"...restorative practices approach is a philosophy rather than a method. (p. 110) ...Restorative practices must be about reintegration, not marginalization. (p.113) ...restorative approach acknowledges that young people make mistakes in the process of growing up and that these mistakes provide them with an opportunity to learn. (p.114) ...formal restorative practices define justice as getting well rather than getting even." (p.116)

 

No More Taking Away Recess and Other Problematic Discipline Practices (No This but That), by Gianna Cassetta and Brook Sawyer. Heinemann, 2013.

I read this book in June 2015 because, despite being a tradition that is rooted deep in many schools, I knew that taking away recess was not an effective consequence. I was hopeful that this book would provide a list of alternative consequences for students for when they misbehave. It did not. Instead, it focused on the how to of building positive relationships; due to positive relationships we are better able to prevent the behaviors that once pigeonholed us into taking away recess.

"Through our relationships, we communicate to students what we expect of them - good and bad - and this often becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy." (p. 25) 

On the surface these are books about: behavior, discipline, classroom management, consequences, punishment, rules, etc. But these books are about much more than those narrow topics. These are books about anti-racism and how that can be influenced within education. They're books about our mindset and how that influences everything that we do and everyone that we come into contact with. They're books about relationships, love, and humanizing people; they're books that force us to focus on a process and not necessarily an outcome, which will require us to be patient. They're books that stress the importance of forgiveness. They are books about teaching.

That's Baseball. That's Life.

‪Sometimes you strike out. Sometimes you strike out looking. Sometimes you hit a ball great only to have it land right where the defender is positioned. Sometimes the defense makes a great play. Sometimes you throw a wild pitch. Sometimes the ball goes between your legs. Sometimes the ball pops out of your glove. Sometimes you lose. Sometimes you lose badly. ‬

‪That's baseball. That's sports. That's life. ‬

Our baseball team, my son's baseball team, the baseball team that I help coach went 0-5 last weekend.

Ouch. That's a lot of losing without any winning. It's easy to lose hope and become despondent when you lose five games in a row. 

Nonetheless, life is about perspective. Where are your silver linings? This was not time wasted. We got to play baseball. We got to compete. We got to experience, firsthand, the things that make sports great; we got to experience the things that build character.

A few days later, I read June 30th's entry in The Daily Stoic. "The Obstacle is the Way." What better opportunity for the nine year old kids on our team to practice, "the Stoic exercise of turning obstacles upside down, which takes one negative circumstance and uses it as an opportunity to practice an unintended virtue or form of excellence." (Holiday, Ryan. The Daily Stoic. New York, Portfolio/Penguin, 2016, 196.)

This is what I love about sports. Failure is a regular occurrence, and that makes for the ideal learning opportunity. In baseball, each at bat, each inning, each game is a new opportunity to do better than you did the time before.

"Every impediment can advance action in some form or another." (Holiday, The Daily Stoic, 196.)