This week I had my first two sea kayaking classes of the new season and both of course had their own personalities. The first was loose and laid back. We covered a lot of the points I wanted to cover and yet, driving home I could pinpoint bits and pieces that I wanted to do differently or that I felt I overlooked.

The second class just two days later was a bit of an over compensation. I had refocused on my learning points and covered everything in more detail. The downside of that was that the students were not ready to go on time and since we had started late, we ended late as well. Sometimes that’s ok though. If the class is going well, and everyone is having a good time (and still in a learning state of mind) there is no reason for the instructor and the class not to agree to extend the session.

In the end you come to realize that when you jump back in after the winter it’s a lot like standing up in a kayak for the first time in awhile. You know how to do it but your balance is a bit off. You lean a bit too much one way, then lean a bit too much the other until you once again find center.

* By the way, the kid in the photograph is performing at Tommy Bartlett’s Ski, Sky & Stage Show in Wisconsin Dells. I was up doing some promotional shots for them last year and had a great “face making” session with the little chap right before he went on. Soon as he jumped up on stage he got as focused and serious as anyone his age could possibly be.

Oh the minute I put them on
I knew I had done something wrong
All her gifts for the dance had gone
Its the red shoes, they cant stop . . . .dancing
- k. bush

Experience is a funny thing. It puts education in perspective. You learn that some things you were taught as rules are really guidelines at best, and many things you were never exposed to should have been part of the program. In religion it’s sometimes suggested that a young minister will focus on the law and the old will focus on forgiveness. Such is the nature of experience. This of course is why teachers need experience with their subject, and not just experience teaching. Such are the thoughts that come to my mind as I get ready for my first class of the new season.

As a matter of preparation, I took time to get out and paddle on the flat water yesterday and play a bit with all those “techniques” we teach in our kayaking classes. I realized that my experiences of the last year have changed the way I do things. My strokes have become muddled. Of course instructors have a more positive definition, they call it “blended”. Forward strokes, draws, rudders, prys, sweeps and the rest are no longer distinct actions but bits of motions strung together resulting in taking your kayak where you want it to go. I found myself needing to stop, take a deep breath, and then replay the method from an instructor’s point of view. A couple times I really struggled to remember how the method went again.

Learning strokes is akin to dance instruction. Each new stroke is like a step. Right foot here, left foot there, and so on. When you first learn to put each step together, it still looks nothing like the dance you’re trying to learn. Your movements are ridged, you’re flat-footed and always a bit out of sync with the music. Over time, as the steps become more natural you suddenly find yourself dancing. Yet if you examine the movements of a good dancer you will realize that they are rarely doing those steps “correctly”. Once they’ve learned the dance, they pass over and through the moves only casually noting with a flash or a tap where that move fits in. If you didn’t see the final product you’d be tempted to suggest they did everything wrong. Still when it’s all put together it’s obvious they did everything right.

I’ve been really lucky to have been able to watch some great paddlers in action. It’s humbling if not downright humiliating to see how easily they move through the water. It’s also pretty common that when you ask them how they did this move or that one, they have to stop and think about it. Sometimes they actually forgot, others they never consciously learned, it just happened through time and experience.

Of course it’s impossible to teach the fluidity of experience. Yet I think I’m understanding a perspective. When we teach kayak rolling a student has their eyes to the final ballet, rolling the boat. With that in mind we show them each step along the way and lead them toward their vision. In the same sense teaching strokes I think, should not be seen as an end to themselves, but a series of steps leading to the dance we call boat control. The obvious question is, “ How do we do that?”, or “How is that different than what I do now?”. I don’t know exactly!! My sense is that it means more emphasis on 2 things;

First is simply reframing the strokes instruction method. Moving from teaching a “stroke” as primary to something more akin to teaching how we accomplish something. The highlight being on the big picture. The BCU has put some good focus on this recently. Instead of a draw we are, “moving our boat sideways”, or learning how to get our boat “over there”, and so forth. Putting the focus on what we are trying to accomplish and not on the move itself. Children learn to walk, not because they want to walk, but because they want to get something!

Second, I think it has to do with feel. The advantage of experience is that we come to naturally feel how our blade acts and reacts in the water. We don’t think about it. The fluidity comes from freely moving our blades about in the water with little resistance. That’s how we combine our strokes so easily. Beginner’s often fight the blade and the water all the while trying to learn a stroke. Removing the stroke from the equation and creating blade motion experiences is probobly key. I use two methods. First I often have students just stand in the water and we go through a few “hand out the car-window” games, sinking and skimming our blades, often with eyes closed. The other I learned from watching Shawna Franklin was simply having students moving their blades through the water without causing their boats to move. Both offer opportunities for students to “feel” their blades without the complication and confusion of learning strokes at the same time.

A new season of instruction starts today. Let’s see what we can figure out. Time to strap on dem red shoes!