Grit and Quit

For the past two decades I've had a part time job with a former Navy SEAL to help him lead PT every morning from 0530 to 0630, outside in a park near downtown Houston for civilians who want a military style workout. Every other month or so this SEAL PT Course hosted a "bootcamp" for twenty new "lifer" candidates. This bootcamp was a two week course from 0500 to 0700 every weekday morning. Hundreds of buddy carries, burpeees, pushups, situps, mountain climbers, and miles and miles of running. If a candidate graduated they got to go onto our maintenance program. The bootcamp had a 50% failure or drop out rate.

One thing that never failed to surprise me was trying to determine who would and who would not make it through the two week bootcamp course at the beginning of each bootcamp. I was reminded of this when reading about Grit and watching the TedTalk by Angela Lee Duckworth on Grit (here). Duckworth states that "grit is passion and perseverance for very long term goals. Grit is having stamina. Grit is sticking with your future vision not just for a week or months but for years." In relation to the two-week bootcamp, Grit was the desire to hang in there and suck up the punishment dished out by former Spec Ops warriors every morning for two weeks.

I always found it remarkable how impossible it was to determine who would and who would not make it through the full two weeks on that first day formation. Who could have guessed that that young man in his 20's who looked to be in such good shape would not come on Wednesday after we sprayed the class with a hose and had them roll in the sand for 30 minutes. Or who would have predicted that the 50 year old diminutive grandmother who on day one couldn't do a single proper pushup would still be there chugging along with the rest of the group at the end of the two weeks. There was no rhyme or reason that I could tell from the outside, or just by looking at people about how they might perform.

One of the other instructors, Harris, was a former 3rd Battalion Army Ranger, Captain. Whenever he and I worked together in a bootcamp I was surprised by his eagerness to provide guidance and homework to the bootcamp class. Where I was a "if they can't hang let'em quit" instructor, he was a "give them the opportunity to succeed" instructor. Two of his favorite pieces of homework to assign the class was to watch the movies "Touching the Void" about stranded mountain climbers and "The Endurance" about Shackleton's expedition.

What I didn't realize then, but do now is that Harris was creating a learning environment with a growth mindset. In an article I read on Fixed and Growth Mindset in Education and How Grit Helps Students Persist in the Face of Adversity (here), Hochanadel and Finamore write of Duckworth et al saying "Faculty can help students develop grit and a growth mindset to increase their chances of reaching long-term goals, by internalizing the motivation to persist." In her Ted Talk Duckworth quotes Dweck on a growth mindset as "When kids learn and read about the brain they're much more likely to persevere when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition." By having the bootcampers watch these stories about overcoming incredible odds and persevering despite the difficulty and challenges, Harris was not only helping the bootcampers put things into perspective, but he was also helping to instill a growth mindset and provide fertile soil for the growth of grit among the trainees.

It would have been nice to have a "Grit Scale" but in the absence of that it was nice to see that after two weeks the graduates who were left after the bootcamp all went on to our maintenance program and there we had the trust in knowing all of them had the grit needed to keep up and persevere.

More Reflection to Become a Better Teacher

I had a chance to talk for a while with Catie, a fellow teacher/trainer/facilitator the other day (and yes I'm trying to get her to be a guest blogger) and she impressed the hell out of me. Really she shouldn't have. It was such a simple thing she was doing, and I should have been doing it myself. I can’t wait to try and implement this with my team. What’s sad is that I’ve been implementing tools like this for the class for years, I’ve just failed to do it for the instructor pool. 

When I was training for my previous job, I would end each class, or even each segment of class by asking each person in the class what they had learned that they hadn’t known before the class started. This I felt did several things: 

1) it made them think back and reflect on the course from their own perspective, wake up those memory cells, 

2) it made them reprocess what I had said and put it into their own words to vocalize it to the class, 

3) it allowed the other trainees in the class to hear it again to help reactivate their memories and 

4) they were allowed to hear it that second time in someone else’s voice, in one of the other trainer’s frame of reference, which might have been different and more in their lingo than mine might have been.

I didn’t know then that I was forcing reflection on the class, but it seemed like the right thing to do so we did. Who knew is was so thoroughly grounded in learning theory. 

Since taking classes and learning about the power of reflection we’ve also created a website group page for our leadership training students. We hope to make it a place they can come and access new tools and tips, hear from others, and reflect again about what they may have learned in the class. A reflection page so to speak. 

I have been reading a book on Skillful Teaching by Stephen Brookfield’s book on teaching, it seemed like every single chapter was filled with feedback loop mechanisms both for the instructor and for the student. It was clear to see that he was a huge proponent of reflection. If I take nothing else from this second life educational journey it will be about the power of reflection for creating resilient long term memory. I see now from your post that I can do more for our cadre of instructors as well in helping them with their own reflection and learning!

Prepping for NaNo

I'm getting ready for my fifth or sixth NaNo (see here). I actually wrote several of my novels by starting them on NaNo. I'm working on my next novel, a thriller because I wrote it two years ago on NaNo. Who knew I had 60K words in a novel sitting there? 

So, I'm prepping for November in several ways. 

First, in the past I've been a (seat of the) "pantser" not a "planner." These are the two types of NaNo writers, Planners and Pantsers. This year I'm going to be more of a Planner. As such I've started my outline. Here it is so far. 

I've been writing it rather than typing it because I'm still in the brainstorming phase. I've also color-coded it and really fleshed it out far more than I have in the past. Helps to start to generate some momentum. 

Secondly, I'm already getting NaNo Writing Buddies. Two are in the same genre, and about a dozen are locals who I can hook up for writing workshops. I've even gotten my cousin in Washington D.C. Involved so I'll have that bit of impetus as well. 

Finally, I've started promoting this blog on NaNo so I can stay accountable to a crowd. Already I'm seeing almost a hundred more views per day which makes me feel that the marketing and publicity is working. And as you've heard me mention, I'm working on getting some guest bloggers to come in. 

Lately, this blog started to waver off piste so to speak. Lots more Adult Learning and Leadership (see here) which I don't intend to stop, but don't you worry, if you're a writer, there will be plenty on writing coming up in the coming weeks. 

Dearth of Lines

I'm not reading as much right now, so there's a dearth of "Morning Lines" (here) or "First Lines" (here). I read a ton for work and for classes. I actually have a week without reading right now having gotten in front of my homework, so I jumped into reading a book for fun. Sadly, there are very few great lines to quote from The Devil and Karl Marx!

That being said, this one hit me the other day. This is a fun song, but these lines struck me:

'I was getting kinda used to being someone you loved

Another Great One

 Recently I got another wonderful review. A few weeks back I wrote about a review I got from a former policeman. He was not someone who wanted to give me a good review, but he grudgingly did (see here). I think I like these reviews from people who don't like my work. 

Thank you KCat. I don't mind at all being compared to Joseph Heller and Earnest Hemingway. I'm happy to hear that. I remember reading lots of Hemingway in high school, in Belgium as a foreign exchange student, and in college. His style never appealed to me either KCat, but Joseph Heller? That's a whole nother issue. 

I love Heller. Catch 22 is one of my faves. Sure there is an ebb and flow that can be tedious, but the writing and the plot, the characters and humor all are superb. I'll gladly let you compare me to Heller.  

It's a tad nerve wracking these reviews. I'm glad I get so many positive ones, but these reviews from folks who don't really like me, they're the best!

No Fan of the Victorian Era, However . . .

 I am no fan of the Victorian Era, however I have started receiving letters from a little group that sends them out that transport me to that time with some Letters from Sherlock Holmes. 

The group that does this is called "Dear Holmes," (see here) and really it's quite fun. For a long while, I participated in Letter Joy, which sent out representations of famous historical letters once every two weeks. It was really interesting but there was no theme to it all. One week would come a letter about a problem installing cabling in the Chesapeake Bay (turned out to be the first telegraph line or something) the next week a riot in Philadelphia, (a voting rights riot), all quite intriguing but no common thread to link it all together. In fact, in each envelope, there were two letters, and in many cases, there weren't commonalities between the two letters! After about a year I gave up on the historical letters through Letter Joy. 

Dear Holmes at leas provides a little, silly, mystery to solve. The one I'm reading through right now is about a museum curator who is writing to Holmes because of break-ins. I'm on my third letter in this case. I predict the next will be the solution. Then it will all start again. 

It's fun to get something through the mail like this. It arrives, I see it on the kitchen counter, I have to take my time, stop life for a moment, to sit down and think and read. It helps me take a step out of the regular hoi-polloi of life. 

I wish there were serial novellas of the same type. Now that I think about it, I betcha there is. Usually, if I've thought of something, some other enterprising entrepreneur has already done it (see here). A serial novella might have that same consistency of theme throughout that I like from the Dear Holmes letters. I'll let ya know!

Epiphanies in Training

"Prior knowledge is the most important determinant for new learning." When I read in the Developmental Perspective chapter of Pratt's Five Perspective's on teaching, it made sense. I agreed with it. But it wasn't until I read the analogy and pm the next page that I truly understood the power of what Pratt was describing. The analogy is:

"The whole procedure is basically quite simple. First, the units are distributed in different categories. One single category may of course be sufficient if you do not have too much to work with. If one has to leave for another place, because of a lack of resources, this is the next step; if not preparation is now completed. It is of vital importance not to over-commit oneself. This means in this context that it is preferable to do a few things at once than to let things pile up. In a short time perspective, this may not seem important, but complications may easily emerge. Mistakes may be expensive. In the beginning, the procedure may appear as complex. But soon it is only a detail among others in our everyday life. It is difficult to foresee an end to this activity in the near future, but we know very little about such things. When the procedure is completed you allocate the material in different groups anew. Thereafter, they can be brought back to their respective places. Soon they will be used again and the whole cycle has to be repeated anew. But on the other hand, this is only part of our lives" (p. 137)

Coming on the heels of a passage on a fuel injector for marine engines, this passage seemed just as foreign until the text tells us to put the passage above in the context of clothes washing. When reading with that understanding the entire passage opens up and suddenly I could see the passage based on my previous experience and prior knowledge.

The epiphany was similar to a technique I used in a training I provided for our field technicians in refineries. Usually, and understandably, coming to my skills training was not greeted with excitement or fanfare. I was a corporate "suit" who knew nothing about fieldwork and would not be able to teach them anything they didn't already know. Or, worse, there was defensiveness that I might try to show them how little they actually knew. Whenever I came to a training there was a palpable air of hostility when the training began. I would start by showing a tic-tac-toe style grid with a series of seemingly random numbers of all shapes and sizes and orientations sprinkled throughout. I asked the class to find as many numbers as possible from 1 to 45 starting at one and stay in order. They had 30 seconds. Invariably no one could find more than 10. Then I told them to start at the top left for the first number, moved to the left for the next, then the next over for the third number, then down a row for the next and so on. Imagine a tic-tac-toe frame superimposed on the image below, start at the top left looking for the first number and move right and down for each subsequent number. It’s easy once you know that framework. I gave them 30 seconds again. The second time around people found far more than 10. I always framed it as helping them through challenges. The washing machine passage above was even more revealing because it requires us to call on previous knowledge that we must have. 

A second epiphany regarding the passage and that last sentence I just wrote, comes in the form of my sons and washing machines. I am just now teaching my 10-year-old how to wash clothes. He doesn't get it. Every time I show him I have to show him the same thing each time. It's just not really sticking. I chalk it up to his not caring, I'm wondering now if it may have more to do with his having no prior knowledge to lean on. My 13-year-old is the same way. It occurred to me that as revelatory as I find the washing machine analogy above, if I told that same passage to either of them and at the end revealed that they should apply it to their knowledge of clothes washing I would be greeted with completely blank and vacant stares in return. They have no prior knowledge to speak of.

Finally, I enjoy the fact in the chapter about the Developmental Perspective, where Pratt is helping us understand what it means to help students further develop, think, and analyze subjects by themselves, that he provides a representative sample in this analogy that no only illustrates the point but helps us as readers develop our own understanding.

•  I wonder do any others of you use analogies like the above, or have you been exposed to any that you found worthwhile or worth sharing?
• Do you find them as intriguing and do they spark the same "ah-ha" moments in you as they do in me?

Pratt, D. D. (1998). Five Perspectives on Teaching in Adult and Higher Education. Krieger.

Leadership Styles

 As a part of my classes I get to work not just on Adult Learning but also Leadership. I commonly have to work on material dealing with Leadership. Here's the most reason info sheet that I worked on for our Leadership classes.

HAS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE EVOLVED OR STAYED THE SAME?

In the class I teach on Foundational Leadership we spend a lot of time focusing on Leadership Styles. We ask the class to segment themselves out into the type of leadership style. I wonder if anyone reading this has changed their style of leadership since taking our class.

DIRECTING type managers usually establish clear goals and objectives for work and staff, although staff members usually have some flexibility on how to meet the goals. Directing style managers usually provide:

• Clear timelines and priorities
• Tells what the job should look like

COACHING involves a great deal of "hands-on" involvement in employee's work process. As a rule, a coaching approach works best when the employee shows weaknesses that need improvement. For coaching to be effective, the employee must acknowledge those weaknesses and indicate a desire to improve. Managers who use Coaching usually provide: 

• Perspective and feedback
• Assurance that mistakes are okay

SUPPORTING leaders play more of a motivational role. The main function is to attempt to instill confidence in employees so they eventually become more self-sufficient and productive. This style typically involves the assigning of tasks by the manager while providing support as needed. Supporting leaders provide:

• An approachable mentor
• A sounding board for problems

DELEGATING leaders place responsibility on the shoulders of their employees. They provide guidance, but only when needed or requested by the employees, and serves in more of a consultant capacity. This style is most effective with an experienced staff. Delegating leaders usually provide: 

• Variety and challenge
• Trust

EVOLVING LEADERSHIP

In general leaders should track their employees along the path shown in the figure below. Employees should move from needing high directive (Directing Style) up to high supporting needs (Coaching Style) to needing low direction (Supporting Style) to being highly competent (Delegating Style). The pathway to success for your teams and your employees is along that route. 

 

 

Emotional Over Masks

Lately I've run into several emotional students, most of it centered around our response to the Covid virus. We mandate that anyone in our training center must wear a face mask. Regardless of the face mask efficacy or the arguments about them, having over one hundred people crammed together in a training space with nothing but Plexiglas dividers around them, we figure that if someone does have the virus, the training area would be a good place to potentially pass it around. 

We do our best to disinfect, but why not mandate masks as well as a further safety net. Several of our trainees have decided to see how far they can push us on this mandate. For the first time in ten years, we had to call the police to escort a trainee out of the building and had a second incident that almost went that far today. 

Many of them, when confronted, don't realize that we are a business that can set policies, and not a public space that's paid for by their tax dollars. Once I tell them that it's their choice not as to whether or not they wear the mask, but rather their choice as to whether or not they want to train with us, generally, they clam up and throw on a face mask awful quick. "You're perfectly free to go take this training at the Baytown Safety Training Facility or the Texas City one, if you don't like our policy on masks." I find that giving a choice allows the trainee to still feel as though they have some control and an option that is there's to make. 

What's the best way to handle this? I have yet to find someone who picks going somewhere else. We have by far the easiest policies of the bunch, the best staff, and the nicest environment for learning. So, I guess that would be my answer, giving the learner a choice and letting them take the one that's best for them. 

Sociology of Adult Education

There is a very clear yet broad central thesis within Lindeman's article on the Sociology of Adult Education. Reading the article, Lindeman breaks down the content into four distinct statements: 1) Adult education gives rise to new social forms, 2) Adult education is social education for purposes of social change, 3) Adult education is a laboratory for democratic experience and 4) Adult education is contemporary problem-solving. He uses these as his framework for his article and proves out each in the subsequent paragraphs after each statement. However, these sentences in the second section boils down those four statements into a central theme, "All education is imbued with purpose. What distinguishes adult education is the fact that its purpose is definitely social" (Lindeman, 1945, p. 8).

Lindeman's central thesis corresponds to my own view of adult education in that when adult is compared with childhood education, it's illustrative to look at children's education and understand it's limitations, capabilities, and intent, to help understand and provide points of comparison for adult education limitation, capabilities, and intents. If childhood education provides foundational learning elements, creates fundamental academic understanding, and a framework for future learning opportunities, then what is the purpose of adult education. It's no longer to provide fundamentals, a framework, instilling foundations.



I look at the learning community I support and look at the intent behind the adult education we provide. Safety and compliance training for employees and workers entering the workforce to support petrochemical and oil refining resources is the first and most obvious answer, but to what end? To keep the workers safe, would be the immediate answer, but there are mechanical and behavior controls that can be designed that would be more effective than the administrative control of training. So, to encourage greater safety standards or progressively safer workplaces, as well as to provide safe workplaces for the workers. Both of these correspond to Lindeman's thesis that adult education is distinguished by its purpose being social in nature.



Lindeman, E. C. (1945). The Sociology of Adult Education. Journal of Educational Sociology, 19(1), 4-13. https://doi.org/10.2307/2263073